Professional Documents
Culture Documents
POLITICAL REGIME
INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE
RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS
P829
Foreign policy and political regime / José Flávio Sombra Saraiva (ed.). Brasília : Instituto
Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais, 2003.
364 p.; 15,5 x 22,5 cm.
ISBN 85-88270-12-9
CDD 327
ibri@unb.br
site:www.ibri-rbpi.org.br
4
SUMÁRIO
INTRODUCTION
José Flávio Sombra Saraiva .......................................................................... 7
PART ONE
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME:
THEORY AND HISTORY
PART TWO
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME:
COMPARATIVE VIEWS AND DIVERSITY OF THE EXPERIENCES
5
7. THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
Christopher Coker .......................................................................... 149
6
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
José Flávio Sombra Saraiva
7
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
8
INTRODUCTION
9
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
10
PART ONE
FOREIGN POLICY
AND
POLITICAL REGIME:
THEORY AND HISTORY
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
12
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS
BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
José Flávio Sombra Saraiva
13
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
Brasilia Seminar. See Musiedlak, Didier. “Fascism, Fascist Regimes and Foreign Policies”.
3 Skidmore, Thomas, Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964: An Experiment in Democracy, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1967; Skidmore, Thomas, Politics of Military Rule in Brazil,
1964-1985, New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988; Stepan, Alfred, The
Military in Politics, Changing Patterns in Brazil, Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1971; Stepan, Alfred (ed.), Authoritarian Brazil. Origins, Policies and Future, New Haven,
London: Yale University Press, 1973; Stepan, Alfred, Democratizando o Brasil, Rio de
Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1988.
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IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
4 Despite this general view on marxist political thought, works of Gramish and Miliband
have proposed a certain level of autonomy to the political sphere.
5 Duverger, Maurice. Partidos Políticos. Brasília: Editora da UnB, s.d.
6 See, for exemple, this type of analysis in Vladimir Kulagin’s paper for the Brasilia Seminar.
See also his adoption of an interesting liberal classification of regime type based in data and
indicators of the Freedom House annual surveys. For what he calls “pratical purposes of
analysis”, political life resulting from the independence process after the disintegration of
the Soviet Union in 1991 form three clusters of political regimes: “free”, “partly free” and
“not free”. See Kulagin, “In Search of a Causal Nexus between Political Regimes and
Foreign Policy Strategies in the Post-Soviet Enviroment”.
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JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
7 As Martin Wight clearly put it in his essay on “Why is there no International Theory?”,
published later in his Diplomatic Investigations, the thesis was to “clarify the idea of a states
system and to formulate some of que questions or propositions which a comparative study
of states systems would examine”. See Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin (eds),
Diplomatic Investigations: Essays on the Theory of International Politics, London: Allen and
Unwin, 1966; Wight, Martin, Systems of States, Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977;
Bull, Hedley. The Anarchical Society: a study of order in world politics, London: Macmillan,
1977; Bull, Hedly and Watson, Adam (eds), The Expansion of International Society,
Oxford, Clarendon, 1984; Watson, Adam, Evolution of International Sociey, London:
Routledge, 1992.
8 Bull, Hedley. Kissinger: The Primacy of Geopolitics, 56, 1980, p. 487.
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IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
Waltz.9 The most preeminent liberal tradition has also emphasized its
distance vis-à-vis the problem of foreign policies.10 Marxist-orientated
theories, focusing on the so-called “world-system” – from Samir Amin
and Immanuel Wallerstein to some variants of Latin American
dependency theory – have enshrined a center-periphery conception
which rejects a relative degree of foreign policy autonomy.11 Despite
some difficulties mentioned by social constructivists like Alexander
Wendt in relation to foreign policies, some modest advances have been
made in this issue.12
Despite this frustrating account on the treatment of foreign
policy in the field of International Relations, the picture is not quite as
bad as it appears. Some studies of the relation between foreign policies
and political regimes have received considerable attention, both within
traditional approaches to foreign policies13 and also in recent analytical
theoretical literature on international relations.14
Let us concentrate on reconciling the two concepts in the two
historical and theoretical traditions. Although the connection between
foreign policies and political regimes has not been the core of their
arguments, both traditions have provided some interesting insights
into the issue. The first one proceeds from historical research undertaken
9 Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy; Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Relations, New York:
Random Hourse, 1979.
10 Keohane, Robert and Nye, Joseph (eds), Transnational Relations and World Politics,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971; Keohane, Robert, After Hegemony: Cooperation
and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.
11 Amin, Samir; Wallerstein, Imanuel, The Modern World System, New York: Academic
Press, 1977.
12 Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge
1977, Stremlau, JJ (ed), The Foreign Policy Priorities of Third World States, Boulder, Westview
Press, 1982; Clarke, Michael. British External Policy-making in the 1990s, London:
Macmillan/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992, particularly the chapter entitled
“The politics of Thatcherism”, p. 230-242.
14 See the coment by Andrew Hurrell upon Andrew Moravcsik liberal views on the
relations between liberal theory and domestic politics. Hurrell, Andrew, “Political Regimes
and Foreign Policies: An Introduction”, chapter 2 of this book.
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JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
“Introduction générale”, p. 12. Renouvin says that the social scientist “ne doit pas ‘isoler’
un aspect de la realité, et qu’il a le devoir de chercher partout – sans opposer les sujets
‘majeurs’ aux sujets ‘mineurs’ – les éléments d’une explication.”
16 Renouvin, Pierre, op. cit., p. 12.
18
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
17 Vigezzi, Brunello, Politica estera e opinione pubblica in Italia dall’Unità ai giorni nostri:
orientamenti degli studi e prospettive della ricerca, Milan: Jaca Book, 1991, p. 14.
18 See some of these authors: Cervo, Amado, Relações Internacionais da América Latina:
velhos e novos paradigmas, Brasília: IBRI, 2001; Cervo, Amado & Bueno, Clodoaldo,
História da política exterior do Brasil, Brasília: Editora da UnB/IBRI, 2002; Saraiva,
José Flávio S., O lugar da África: a dimensão atlântica da política exterior do Brasil,
19
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
Brasília: Editora da UnB, 1996; Rapoport, Mario, Crisis y liberalismo en Argentina, Buenos
Aires: Editores de América Latina, 1998; Rapoport, Mario, El laberinto argentino: política
internacional en un mundo conflictivo, Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1987; Paradiso, José, Debates
y trayectoria de la politica exterior argentina, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano,
1993; Moura, Gerson, Sucessos e ilusões; relações internacionais do Brasil durante e após a
Segunda Guerra Mundial, Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1991; Bandeira, Moniz, Estado nacional e
política internacional na América Latina: o continente nas relações Argentina-Brasil (1930-
1922), Brasília: Editora da UnB, 1993; Hirst, Mônica, O pragmatismo impossível: a política
externa do segundo governo Vargas (1951-1954), Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 1990; Albuquerque,
José Augusto G. (org.), Sessenta anos de política externa brasileira: crescimento, modernização
e política externa; diplomacia para o desenvolvimento, São Paulo: USP, 1996; Bernal-Meza,
Raúl, América Latina en la economía política mundial, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor
Latinoamericano, 1994; Cervo, Amado & Döpcke, Wolfgang (orgs.), Relações internacionais
dos países americanos; vertentes da história, Brasília: Linha Gráfica, 1994; Doratioto, Francisco,
Espaços nacionais na América Latina; da utopia bolivariana à fragmentação, São Paulo:
Brasiliense, 1994; Tomassini, Luciano, Transnacionalización y desarrollo nacional em América
Latina, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 1984.
19 Cervo, Amado, “Political regimes and Brazil´s foreign policy”, chapter 12 of this
book.
20
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
argentina, 1910-1939, Buenos Aires: 2001; Cisneros, A. & Escudé, Carlos, Historia general
de las relaciones exteriores de la República Argentina. Buenos Aires: 2000.
21
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
22
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
Vladimir, “In Search of a Causal Nexus between Political Regimes and Foreign Policy
Strategies in the Post-Soviet Enviroment”, chapter 5 of this book.
23
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
26 Benoit, Kenneth, “Democracies really are more pacific (in general): Reexamining Regime
Type and War Involvement, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 40 (4), 1995/6, p. 636-657.
27 Gaubatz, Kurt Taylor, “Democratic States and Commitment in International Relations”,
24
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
29 Idem, p. 638.
30 Coker, Christopher, “The continuity of American Foreign Policy”, chapter 7 of this book.
25
JOSÉ FLÁVIO SOMBRA SARAIVA
CONCLUDING REMARKS
26
IS IT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH A CAUSAL NEXUS BETWEEN FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME?
33 Frank, Robert, “Political Regimes and Foreign Policies: Attitudes Towards War and
Peace”, chapter 3 of this book.
34 Hurrell, Andrew, op. cit.
27
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
Press, 1999. He states that: ‘[L]ike Waltz, I am interested in international politics, not
29
ANDREW HURRELL
of these theories make certain assumptions about states and the interests
and preferences of states in order to generate theories of how groups
of states interact cooperatively or conflictually or about the nature and
dynamics of the international system as a whole. All stress that they
are interested primarily in the outcome of state interactions, not in
explaining the behaviour and motivations of individual states. This
distinction between a theory of international politics and a theory of
foreign policy has become quite well established,2 and it remains
important. It would be inappropriate to take, say, Wendt’s version of
constructvism and, in the form that Wendt deploys it, expect it to
yield great insight into many specific problems of foreign policy analysis.
But it is also a problematic and limited distinction. On the one
hand, it is doubtful that any theory of international politics can avoid
foreign policy in quite this clear-cut way.3 After all, what sort of theory
of international relations is it that can tell us nothing about the evolving
international behaviour of even very dominant states over even very
long periods of time? The point is not that a theory of international
relations should be able to make point predictions (what state A will
do at point Y?), but rather that it could reasonably be expected to
explain (or at least be consistent with) broad trends in the foreign
policy of what one might call ‘system-defining states’. On the other
hand, foreign policy analysis is unavoidably about interactions and
relationships. A theory of foreign policy might explain why a state
foreign policy’, p.11; and he recognizes that ‘[T]heir foreign policies are often determined
primarily by domestic politics’, p. 2. Kenneth Waltz, ‘International Politics is not Foreign
Policy’, Security Studies 6 (1996); Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and
Discord in the World Political Economy.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
2 See Gideon Rose, ‘Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy’, World Politics 51
(October 1998): 144-172; and Fareed Zakaria, ‘Realism and Domestic Politics’, International
Security 17, 1 (Summer 1992).
3 As with so much of his work Waltz maintains this rigid distinction between a theory of
international politics and a theory of foreign policy in large part because of his view as to
the nature of theory. On this account, because foreign policy is potentially the subject of
such a wide range of internal and external factors, all we can aim for are ‘analyses’ or
‘accounts’ not proper theory. See Waltz, ‘International Politics is not Foreign Policy’,
p. 54-55, and discussion in Rose, ‘Neoclassical realism’, p. 144-146.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
31
ANDREW HURRELL
tradition, regime type per se is not critical. Moravcsik defines his liberal
theory as one that can co-opt or include any actual process of domestic
preference formation or aggregation, whether or not this has a
specifically ‘liberal’ character. He begins with a traditional-looking
liberal emphasis on state-society relations and on the state as an arena
for pluralist politics rather than as an actor. He does this precisely so
that he can try to ‘take preferences seriously’. But, in order to make his
approach work across many kinds of societies, including many illiberal
regimes, he has to include all sorts of ‘transmission belts’ many of
which have nothing to do with the traditional liberal emphasis on
pluralism. Hence the state is viewed as a representative institution even
if it represents only people who have captured the state and have few
or no links with the broader society.
But whilst it is true that the distinction between international
politics and foreign policy matters, it is also true that many broad
theoretical ideas in International Relations have been used as a basis
for analysing the foreign policies of individual states or of groups of
states. Thus those influenced by realism will always tend to downplay
the importance of regime type and will emphasize the extent to which
states are pushed and shoved by the constraints and opportunities of
the international political system to behave in particular ways. For all
strands of realism, the imperatives of seeking security in a self-help world
forces all states, good or bad, democratic or authoritarian, to seek to preserve
their security and follow the logic of balance of power politics. Even if
they seek to escape, the system will socialize them by creating incentives
that reward certain kinds of power political behaviour, and by punishing
deviance. From this it also follows that the practice of foreign policy is
about locating and implementing a more or less objective national interest
that is derived primarily from the constraints and opportunities presented
by the international system, not from the vagaries and vacillations of
domestic politics.5 There is nothing unique to International Relations
5 Within Latin American writing, this idea can be linked to the concept of ‘política de
estado’, defined by Rosendo Fraga as those policies ‘shared by all the relevant political
parties in one country; and consequently whose execution does not depend on the changes
that elections might have on governments’.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
about this view of states and foreign policy. It draws directly on a long
tradition of historical work emphasizing ‘den Primat der Aussenpolitik’.
Most of those concerned with the foreign policies of particular
states have quickly concluded that systemic forces alone are not enough
to provide an adequate explanatory picture and include various unit-
level factors. Of course, those who wish to see themselves as working
within a realist tradition will always tend to start with the view that it
is the distribution of power in the international political system that
sets the basic parameters of foreign policy. ‘A good theory of foreign
policy should ask first what effect the international system has on
national behaviour, because the most powerful generalizable
characteristic of a state in international relations is its relative position
in the international system.’6 But it is noticeable, first, just how quickly
realist analyses of foreign policy move to bring in various unit-level or
domestic variables; and, second, just how deep are the divergences
between different strands of realism (offensive realism, defensive
realism, neoclassical realism) over which domestic factors are to be
included (state strength; perceptions, domestic economic interest
groups); and over how far incorporating them means that moving out
of the realist camp. Thus, for example, Zakaria’s ‘state-centred realism’
considers the relative capability of the government vis-à-vis society in
his attempt to explain the US rise to world power, but still considers
this (rather unconvincingly) to be a realist approach.7
It is, therefore, precisely the weaknesses of systemic accounts
that press towards the analysis of domestic factors in general and towards
thinking about the character of different regime types in particular.
This is the case not least because many of the apparently straightforward
categories of conventional realist international relations analysis turn
out to be anything other than straightforward. It may be true that all
states and all political actors seek power and promote their self-interest.
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ANDREW HURRELL
But the crucial question is always: what sorts of power and in pursuit of
what kinds of self-interest?8
The utter unobviousness of ‘security’ in the context of US-Latin
American relations during the Cold War provides a good example.
Security was most often about indirect security challenges resulting from
political, social or economic instability in Latin America. US policymakers
had long feared that such instability would bring to power radical nationalist
anti-American governments or would create conflicts and crises that could
be exploited by Washington’s enemies. Fear of political or revolutionary
instability predated the Cold War, but the ideological and power political
struggle with Moscow heightened the salience of such threats. As the Cold
War became an increasingly global conflict after the Korean War and as
competition and conflict shifted increasingly from Europe to the
developing world, so the perceived importance of such conflicts for the
global balance of power grew and the logic of ‘falling dominoes’ and alliance
credibility became increasingly prevalent: If the U.S did not respond to
challenges even in areas that were intrinsically or objectively ‘unimportant’,
then this would reflect badly on more central alliance relations and would
lead the other side to step up the pressure. Thus the logic of rivalry magnified
many intrinsically minor conflicts, increased the threat from political
instability, and made the Third World ‘matter’ in new ways that were
hard both to define and to limit.
It is certainly the case that, as Lars Schoultz puts it, ‘[I]f one wants
to understand the core of United States policy toward Latin America, one
studies security’.9 But the meaning of even such apparently powerful
8 The myth of an objective national interest derived from the competitive logic of the
international political system has been the subject of sustained critique for many years. But
these are also the questions that have driven much recent constructivist research on norms,
culture and identity. See, in particular, Peter J. Katzenstein, Introduction. In: Peter J.
Katzenstein ed., The Culture of National Security. New York: Columbia, 1996. Note, however,
that there is a great deal of ambiguity within constructivism over whether the identities that
underpin state preferences are the result of social interaction (as on the Wendtian account),
or solely the product of largely autonomous national histories and processes of state
formation.
9 Lars Schoultz, National Security and United States Policy towards Latin America, Princeton:
34
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
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ANDREW HURRELL
36
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
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ANDREW HURRELL
general move towards neo-liberalism in the 1990s, this did not, again as a
matter of historical record, translate into a single pattern of foreign policy
– either in terms of preferences or outcomes. Thus both Mexico and
Argentina did move towards a closer relationship with the United States,
but with highly significant differences. Thus, in the Mexican case, there
was a conscious policy of segmentation – i.e. institutionalizing deep
economic integration, but seeking to maintain distance of non-economic
issues; whereas in Argentina the Menem strategy was built around the idea
of close linkage between the political and economic – in the hope that
very close political alignment with Washington would bring economic
benefits. Equally, even if Brazil did move economically in a neo-liberal
direction, this did not bring either the desire for close alignment with the
US or the actual development of improved relations. Relations remained
distant and marked by both divergent views of the international system
and a persistent sense of frustration.
So we clear the ground for looking at the importance of
domestic factors by looking at the weaknesses and limits of systemic
or ‘outside-in’ explanations of foreign policy behaviour. Yet ‘political
regime’ is only one of many potentially important ways of thinking
about the role domestic factors. On the one hand, we may wish to
examine the impact of differences amongst similar ‘regime types’. Thus
Risse-Kappen has sought to show how differences in political
institutions, policy networks, and societal structures account for variance
in the foreign policy of democratic states during the Cold War.10 On
the other hand, the domestic factors that really matter may have nothing
to do with regime type at all. Thus we might consider, amongst many
other factors, domestic political and economic ideologies, political
institutions and party politics, socio-economic interests and interest-
group politics, the strength of the state, and the character of state-
society relations. Foreign policy analysis has sometimes degenerated
into the production of ever more complex typologies that lay out
every conceivable category of domestic variable – as in the work of
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
Rosenau or Brecher during the 1960s and early 1970s. These can serve
as useful check-lists, but not much more.
More useful has been the clustering of factors as between systemic
explanations, society-centred explanations, and state-centred
approaches.11 Why more useful? The first reason is that this clustering
helps us to fill the analytical space between Waltz’s narrow view of
explanatory theory on the one hand and mere ‘accounts’ on the other.
Much of the work that has driven debate and provoked further analysis,
whether within History or Political Science, has sought to claim that
one or other of these clusters has, actually, been dominant in the foreign
policy of a particular country. Think, for example, of the challenge to
orthodox, externalist, power-political accounts of the origins of the
First World War posed by social imperialist and other innenpolitische
factors and forces. Second, because each of these clusters relate to broader
sets of theories that give rise to expected patterns of behaviour. If foreign
policy is really driven by x, what observable outcomes would we expect
to see? What would be hard or otherwise instructive cases that would
enable us to decide whether this pattern of explanation holds? And
third, because each of these clusters has generated, or can be related to,
particular methodologies (for example, organizational process,
bureaucratic politics, cognitive or psychological approaches, discursive
approaches.12
In a sense, this is all very obvious. But it is important to recognize
the existence of a wide range of such domestic factors. We might, for
example, see great continuity in the foreign policy of a country across
changes of regime and therefore conclude that domestic factors are
relatively unimportant. Brazil since 1930 might be just such a case.
11 For one of the clearest see G. John Ikenberry, David A Lake, and Michael Mastanduno,
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ANDREW HURRELL
40
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
13 Compare, for example, the chapter by Rapoport and Spiguel in this volume with Carlos
Escude’s Realismo Perifico: Fundamentos para la Nueva Politica Exterior Argentina. Buenos
Aires: Planeta, 1992.
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ANDREW HURRELL
14 Prominent supporters of the idea that democracy is problematic for running a good
foreign policy include Adam Ulam, George Kennan and, of course, Henry Kissinger. There
is a separate set of debates, which I also do not consider here, concerning the claim that
democracies are more successful in fighting and winning the wars that they enter. See
Michael C. Desch, ‘Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters’, International
Security 27, 2. Fall 2002, p. 5-47.
15 Kenneth Waltz, Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics, London: Longmans, 1968.
42
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
II. DEFINITIONS
Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1986, p. 73.
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ANDREW HURRELL
18 Ruth Berins Collier and Paul Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the
Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1991, p. 789.
19 Fernando H. Cardoso, On the Characterization of Authoritarian Regimes in Latin
America. In: David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1979, p. 38.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
20 Christian Anglade and Carlos Fortin, The State and Capital Accumulation in Latin
America: A Conceptual and Historical Introduction. In: Anglade and Fortin (ed.), The State
and Capital Accumulation in Latin America, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 1985, p.
16 and 19.
21 T.J. Pempel, Restructuring Social Coalitions: State, Society, and Regime. In: Rolf Torstendahl
(ed.), State Theory and State History, Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992, p.120.
22 Manuel Antonio Garreton, Hacia una nueva era politica: Estudio sobre democratizaciones,
the erratic character of Argentinian foreign policy must look beyond the shifts between
democratic and authoritarian regimes and instead focus on the deep socio-political conflicts
that have existed both between state and society and within the state.
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ANDREW HURRELL
24 Walter Carlsnaes, Foreign Policy, In: Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse and Beth A Simmons
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
25 Michael N. Hunt, Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, New York: Yale University Press,
1987, and, written within the ideological envelope, Tony Smith, America’s Mission. The
United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994.
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48
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
REVOLUTIONARY REGIMES
26 Henry Kissinger, Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy. In: American Foreign Policy 3rd
ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1977, p. 12. This essay gives Kissinger’s views of the foreign
policy tendencies of democratic states (bad for foreign policy), marxist-leninist (accentuating
international tension), and ‘new states’ (prone to unstable and reckless foreign policies).
More broadly on the challenge of revolution see Jennifer Welsh, Edmund Burke and
International Relations,Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995.
27 See Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy, chapter 4.
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ANDREW HURRELL
This is the area where the strongest claims are made about the
links between regime type and at least one kind of foreign policy
behaviour, namely the resort to war. Democratic peace theory rests on
28 For a particularly useful analysis that is of broader relevance, see Steven I. Levine, Perception
and Ideology in Chinese Foreign Policy. In: Thomas W. Robinson and David Shambaugh
eds., Chinese Foreign Policy. Theory and Practice, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
29 This interaction is explored in David Armstrong, Revolutions and World Order, Oxford:
50
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
two simple claims: (a) that democracies almost never fight each other and
very rarely consider the use of force in their mutual relations; and (b) that
other types of relations are much more conflictual including democracies’
interactions with non-democracies. Note that the claim is almost always
made in more or less probabilistic terms (ie it will not necessarily predict
all foreign policy behaviour; it is not about ‘point predictions’). Few would
claim that it is a determinstic law. Note too the idea of a separate peace
between democracies. It is not a general theory since it is agnostic or at
least much less certain about relationship between democracies and non-
democracies. Some argue that democracies are as war-prone as non-
democracies in interactions involving the latter. Others argue that, even
here, democracies are more pacific. But for the proponents the main claim
is clear: although democracies are not inherently more peaceful than
authoritarian regime, there does seem secure evidence of a separate
democratic peace. There have been military threats, militarized crises, but
almost no inter-state war. In addition, militarized disputes seem to occur
less frequently than would be expected in a random distribution and almost
never escalate into war. 31
The literature on democratic peace theory is by now very
extensive and I do not propose to review it in any broad or general
way, or to highlight its problems and limits. Instead let me make
three points relevant to the concerns of this volume.
First, the debate on the underlying causal logics behind democratic
peace has tended to move away from an emphasis on democratic
regimes and institutions and towards an emphasis on democratic or
liberal societies. There is quite general agreement that the structural
constraints of democratic institutions and of democratic politics can only
be used with great difficulty to explain the existence of a separate peace
only between democracies. Hence much discussion has revolved around
31 Democratic peace theory has become central, not just to debates in International Relations
theory but also to regional security analysis. Take, for example, Gerald Segal’s claim: ‘By far
the most important factor for international security seems to be the emergence of pluralist
(democratic) political systems’, ‘How Insecure is Pacific Asia’, International Affairs
73, 2.1997, p. 235. For a good overview of the debate see Brown, Michael, Lynn-Jones,
Sean and Miller, Steven (eds.), Debating the Democratic Peace, Cambridge: MA, 1996.
51
ANDREW HURRELL
32 Steve Chan, ‘In search of Democratic Peace: Problems and Promise’, Mershon International
52
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
33 Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Synder, Democratization and the Danger of War.
International Security 20, 1. Summer 1995, p. 5-38. There have also been claims that
promoting liberalization and peace-keeping can have destabilizing effects, see, for example,
Roland Paris, ‘Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism’, International Security
22, 2, 1997: 54-89.
34 For a strong Kantian account of southern cone international politics see Philippe C.
Schmitter, Change in Regime Type and Progress in International Relations. In: Emanuel
Adler and Beverly Crawford eds., Progress in Post War International Relations, New York:
Columbia U.P., 1991.I have analyzed this democratizing logic in more detail in ‘An
emerging security community in South America?’, In: Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett
eds., Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
53
ANDREW HURRELL
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
36SeeMiles Kahler ed., Liberalization and Foreign Policy, New York: Columbia U.P., 1997.
37For a recent treatment see Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military
Foundations of Modern Politics, New York: Free Press, 1994.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
57
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
towards their European neighbours (with British hankering after the special
relationship being the most important exception). This enforced adaptation
was far from smooth and unproblematic, and varied from country to
country; but it remains one of the most important ways in which a changing
international context affected the character of the European state. Finally,
the Cold War set the boundaries to Europe. ‘European’ integration was in
reality only sub-regional integration between a small group of countries
with compatible values and similar economic and security policies. This
both facilitated the process of regional rapprochement and integration
and meant that the difficult decisions about what to do about Eastern
Europe could be left aside. Whilst the rhetoric of a reunified Germany
and of a reintegrated East was maintained, the division suited most West
Europeans and was a central element of what many took to be the stability
of the post-1945 European order. It gave Western Europe ‘... the peculiar
advantage of never having to worry, from 1951 to 1989, about the
implications of trying to incorporate into “Europe” the even poorer lands
to the East’. The Cold War also dictated the nature of relations with
important parts of the periphery, ensuring a close military relationship
with Turkey and the continued involvement of Spain, Portugal and Greece
with the ‘West’, despite their authoritarian politics.
The point of this brief sketch of Europe is to illustrate just how
far the international system has to be seen as a cause as well as a
consequence of domestic politics and the character of domestic political
regimes. Even apparently secure and well-established states have been
shaped by their interaction with the international system, just as the
international system has been shaped by the interaction amongst states.
Reflecting both greater domestic weakness and far higher levels of
external vulnerability, this picture is even more true of post-colonial
states. Consider Christopher Clapham’s analysis of the creation and
the subsequent unravelling of the post-colonial state in Africa:
The power of rulers derives not only from the material resources
and ideological support of their own people, but equally from
their ability to draw on the ideological and material resources
provided by other states – and also non-states, such as
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ANDREW HURRELL
The point is not to claim that Topik is able to resolve the long-
standing arguments about the strength and character of the 19th century
Brazilian state (involving Faoro, Murilo de Carvalho, Uricoechea
amongst others). It is only to highlight the interpenetration of the
external and internal and the degree to which studying any political
38 Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System. The Politics of State Survival,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 11.
39 Steven Topik, Precocious Globalization: The Effect of the World Market on State Building in
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
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ANDREW HURRELL
V. CONCLUSIONS
40 See also the argument in Robert Frank’s paper that ‘an international democratic logic has
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: AN INTRODUCTION
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
!
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES:
ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
Robert Frank
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ROBERT FRANK
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
democracy by force. Certainly, she was invaded, at first, and the war,
initially a defensive war, was, for her, a means of freeing her endangered
homeland. But she quickly took a liking to war, to help create “Sister
Republics” and a European order favourable to France. And so the
Republic lost its soul, and to the benefit of a General, Napoléon
Bonaparte. During the 19th century, Republicans remembered this
lesson. In 1870, with the exception of those who rallied to the regime,
they were hostile to the war that Napoléon III and his supporters had
undertaken against the German states. Immediately following the defeat
of Sedan, the Second Empire collapsed, and the Republic was declared.
The Republic had to carry on with the war, but did so as only a defensive
war, until defeat came in 1871. At the end of the 19th and beginning
of the 20th century, the Republican Right was tempted by “power
nationalism”, which spread widely through French society, and through
some European societies. within the framework of different political
regimes. But as far as France was concerned, the Republic, by
undertaking colonial wars, diverted nationalism towards horizons
outside of Europe. In the spirit of the time, these conflicts were not
considered as real wars; they were simply expeditions of “pacification”
and of the “civilisation” of “savage” peoples. The idea of real war, which
would take place in Europe over the revenge and recuperation of Alsace-
Lorraine – lost after the 1871 defeat –, dwindled in Republican France.
Ideas of peace based on the notion of law developed in several circles;
Léon Bourgeois was already thinking of a League of Nations. In fact,
in 1914, whatever Republican France’s share in the responsibility for
the outbreak of war, her attitude was relatively moderate and
moderating. On the contrary, the authoritarian Russian regime and
the authoritarian or semi-authoritarian Austro-Hungarian and German
regimes took the most serious decisions, those that accelerated the
spiral. Britain, a liberal, parliamentary monarchy in the process of
democratisation, entered into the war rather reluctantly, and the
American democracy only committed itself in 1917.
We must therefore make a first distinction. On the one hand,
democratic countries did not hesitate to organise military expeditions
within the context of their colonialist expansion or of their imperialism,
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ROBERT FRANK
and given that Germany’s William II was embarking on the same path,
they were not the only ones doing so. Here, the realist interpretation
is valid: there seem to be few differences between the foreign policies
of the great nations of the Belle Epoque, whatever their political regime.
But on the other hand, democratic countries were reluctant to commit
themselves to a war between powers. Once wars were declared, they
were entered into unenthusiastically, yet with a tranquil determination,
as they were certain of the justness of their actions. Recent research
shows how important the democratic discourse was for war propaganda
between 1914 and 1918, in both France and England. But the liberal
interpretation is also valid to a certain extent. Of course, if we adopt
the point of view according to which the imperialism of countries
now at the “supreme state of capitalism” were the main cause of the
Great War, then democratic countries are just as much to blame, if
not more, for this general catastrophe. But although imperialist rivalry
poisoned international relations until around 1911-1912, it seems to
have been relatively subdued after this date, and other causes and other
factors led in fact to the outbreak of war. Firstly, rivalry in the Balkans
between Russia and Austria-Hungary, two great powers in crisis but
to whom imperialism was of secondary importance, and whose
capitalism was less developed. And secondly, the system of alliances
that each European country, frightened of losing guarantees of security,
wanted to respect. This last and fundamental reason brings us back to
the realist interpretation of international relations.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
69
ROBERT FRANK
70
POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
71
ROBERT FRANK
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
73
ROBERT FRANK
First of all, these two ideologies are not the same. They come
together only in the way they reject liberal democracy and legitimise
violence. As far as the other issues are concerned, they are in total
opposition. In actual fact, one of the anchors of fascism was indeed,
from its very beginnings, communism. Of course, there was the
Germano-Soviet Pact of August 1939. But Hitler declared his relief
to Mussolini on the 21st of June 1941 on the eve of the invasion of
the USSR: he could end this unnatural collaboration between Berlin
and Moscow, and achieve one of the objectives of fascism, the end of
communism. As far as anti-fascism was concerned, from 1935 to 1939
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
then from 1941 to the 1960s, it was used as one of the preferred tools
of the USSR to rally the largest number of democrats to its cause. Both
forms of totalitarianism kill liberty, but equality is denied by fascism
and, on the contrary, claimed by communism. In the one case, ideology
gives explicit priority to the law of the strongest, the hierarchy of
nations, the hierarchy of races in the case of Nazism, the hierarchy
around leaders at every level of society, and class collaboration. In the
other, emphasis is laid on the search for equality, social justice, the end
of exploitation of man by man, the class struggle, and the institution
of socialism; then, when a society of abundance is reached, the advent
of the “communism” which will witness the disappearance of the class
struggle and the wasting away of the State. Fascism openly denounces
democracy, whereas Stalinism takes the word at face value and
hypocritically proclaims the liberties and rights of man inherent in the
1936 Constitution, which, of course, is never applied. This leads to
the two forms of totalitarianism which contradict one another regarding
“war and peace”. War lies at the heart of fascist ideology, whereas peace,
on the contrary, is necessary for Stalinism, whose violence is expressed
differently. It is a violence which lies within the Soviet regime, and
thus within communist-imposed regimes, and not a violence imposed
on international relations. In fact, quite the opposite. Precisely, Stalin
wanted precisely to build “socialism in a single country” in the 1920s
and 1930s, was conscious of the balance of power on an international
scale, and aware that the kind of global revolution Trotsky hoped for,
risked setting off a war which would be fatal for the revolutionaries.
The specificity of Stalinism is prudence in foreign policy, which
counterbalances the voluntarism and cruelty used in the programming
of internal transformation. Hence Stalin’s cynical game of cat and
mouse with the democratic countries and Nazi Germany to escape
military conflict in the 1930s. “No” to war, unless it is imposed, as
was the case in the end between 1941 and 1945. “Yes” to revolution,
on the condition that it does not set off a war which may be lost. This
idea of peace is even orchestrated and transformed into ideology during
the Cold War through the formation of the peace movement, inspired
and dominated by militant communists, whose objective was to give
75
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
he would obtain nothing at all, and fell back on a careful policy which
became even benevolent towards the Anglo-Americans from 1942
onwards. The Vichy regime collaborated with the German occupiers,
but on the condition that it would not be drawn into the war, which
in fact Hitler did not wish for either. The Latin American governments
committed themselves at different moments to the war against the
Axis powers and the Empire of the Rising Sun. Argentina, whether
led by Castillo, Ramirez or the Farrell-Peron team, refused to break
diplomatic and economic relations with Germany and Japan. But at
the last minute, on the 27th of March 1945, it declared war on both
countries in order to be part of the future United Nations Organisation.
Dictatorships or authoritarian regimes lacking foreign ambition should
remain in the concert of nations and thus not perturb the international
order. The exceptions confirm the rule: when these regimes take this
risk, they lose out. Galtieri’s takeover in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
in 1982, that he considered legal, was considered as an attack on
international law by the majority of the international community.
His defeat by Margaret Thatcher’s Britain played a large part in the fall
of the Argentine dictator. The invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq in 1990 was annulled by the Gulf War of 1991. It was only the
second war against Iraq in 2003 which put an end to the dictatorship
of the person threatening to undermine the international order. On
the other hand, the blows struck to the European order by Milosevic
led to the war in Kosovo, which he lost in 1999, and his defeat quickly
led to his demise.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
Euromissiles in Europe. Once again, the West did not react with open
war, but with the strategy of Cold War, which again featured the
firmness of democracies and the use of economic and ideological
weapons. This time with greater efficiency, as the United States had
wiped some of its slate clean after its departure from Vietnam, whilst
the image of direct aggression on the part of the USSR in Afghanistan
was added to the accumulation of negative images of Soviet tanks in
Budapest in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. In addition, the arms race
was renewed, to such an extent that the USSR’s economy was soon
exhausted. In short, the strategy of the Cold War really was the
continuation of a policy of reaction by means other than open war, to
the benefit of democratic countries. It is really an illusion to try to
decide if we ought to consider the USSR as a state like any other in
international relations, or if we ought to take into account its
communist specificity. Both perceptions are certainly necessary: it is a
state like any other, whose rationality was based on national interest
and geopolitical considerations of security and power, to the extent
that it placed its ideological ambitions of communist victory in a long
term future (unlike Nazi totalitarianism). But because these ambitions
existed, and because communist ideology could distort its perceptions,
it is impossible to ignore the link between communism and Soviet
foreign policy.
At the time of the final crisis of the USSR, the Iraqi attack
against Kuwait was a provocation against the international democratic
order. It provoked open military intervention, supervised by democratic
countries. In fact, it was easier to take action against Saddam Hussein’s
Iraq which did not have the strength of the former Soviet Union, or
of the present Russia, which acted almost freely in its repressive war in
Chetchenia Here, it was a case of direct and external aggression against
an internationally recognised state (Kuwait), and the UNO readily
supported the anti-Iraqi coalition. Again, we can identify the rules of
the game: it is the capacity for external pollution of dictatorships that
democracies seek to eliminate, and not their capacity for internal
pollution.
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81
ROBERT FRANK
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES: ATTITUDES TOWARDS WAR AND PEACE
83
PART TWO
FOREIGN POLICY
AND
POLITICAL REGIME:
COMPARATIVE VIEWS AND DIVERSITY
OF THE EXPERIENCES
DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
"
FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND
FOREIGN POLICIES
Didier Musiedlak
1S.G. Payne, A History of Fascism 1914-1945, Madison, Wisconsin, 1995; Juan J. Linz,
Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000; R. De
Felice, Il Fascismo: Le Interpretazioni dei Contemporanei e degli Storici, preface of G. Sabbatucci,
Bari, Lateza, 1998; E. Gentile, Fascismo: Storia e Interpretazione, Bari, Laterza, 2002.
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
to the national honor. The second stage is the conquest of power, with
the transformation of the movement in a partisan State governed by a
dictatorship resorting to mass repression. Mobilization of the people
and politization of civil society are the chief characteristic of the new
regime, having as a corollary the clearly stated will to create a new
man. Under this totalitary dimension, the phenomenon could be be
taken as the way of authoritative regimes making use of mass
mobilization.
Therefore the present study concentrates on revolutionary
fascism, and in order to better illustrate its peculiar innovations it
focuses the Italian and the German experiences. As a matter of fact
these two nations have lived a domestic project aiming at the creation
of a new ruling class devoted to the regeneration of the country. From
this perspective, it is interesting to show the external emanations of
these policies and measure the degree of synchronization between
domestic and external objectives.
2 On this question see E. Gentile, La Via Italiana al Totalitarismo: Il Partito e lo Stato nel
Regime Fascista, Roma, Nis, 1995; D. Musiedlak, Lo Stato Fascista e la sua Classe Politica
1922-1943, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2003; M. Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers: Grundlegung und
Entwicklung seiner Inneren Verfassung, München, 1989; K. D. Bracher, M. Funke, H.H.
Jacobsen, Deutschland 1933-1945: Neue Studien zur Nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft, Bonn,
Droste, 1992.
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
Friedrich Ebert, was the first authoritarian inflexion. The political crisis
opened with the great depression increased the pace of this evolution.
Nominated President of the Council by King Vittorio Emmanuele,
in November-December 1922, Mussolini received full powers from
both Chambers. Hitler was made Chancellor on January 30th. 1933,
in a perfectly legal manner. In this context, the only way opened was a
regime of cooperation between the new and the old elites. In Germany,
the system was regulated by the duality: Party bureaucracy
(Parteibürokratie) and State bureaucracy (Staatsbürokratie).3 The
complexity of the system was in part solved by the personalization of
the two hierarchies: Hitler was the Führer and the Chancellor of the
Reich; Herman Göring, the Minister President of Prussia and Delegate
in charge of the four-year plan. However, in practical terms the regime
could not work without the old elite.4 In Italy, this mechanism of
double administration was also outlined. According to a 1925 law
Mussolini was the Duce del Fascismo and Capo del Governo; since
the 1930’s the PNF Secretary had the status of Minister.
The next step was undoubtedly the most difficult. After
neutralizing the old elite, during this period of active cooperation, the
system should lead to a more radical second phase characterized by the
emergence of a new partisan elite and the eradication of the traditional
elite.5 However, notwithstanding the efforts to that effect, the second
phase remained incomplete.
Within this structure the State was subjected to a “continued
revolution”. Since the Machtergreifung, the Weimar Constitution was
mutilated (with the suppression of the Reichsrat), but not entirely
suppressed. The Italian constitution remained untouched. This apparent
lack of mobility in the two countries hid in fact a practice of subversion
3 W. Zapf, “Die Verwalter der Macht : Materialen zum Sozialprofil der Höheren Beamtenschaft”,
in ders (Hrsg), Beiträge zur Analyse der Deutschen Obserschicht, Piper Verlag, München,
1965, p.78.
4 H. Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt GMBH, Stuttgart,
1966, p. 14.
5 M. Kater, The Nazi Party : A Social Profile of Members and Leaders, 1919-1945, Blackwell,
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
more dangerous because it was not so visible. In his 1941 book The
Dual State E . Fraenkel had defined it in large lines. The task implied
the gradual transformation of the political class in the context of
“the normative State”, operating within the double State under a
dictatorship.6 Behind the façade of the traditional State a new partisan
State was formed, to act as a phagocyter of the old structure.
Diplomacy was not outside this process. The tactics used by the two
regimes was the enfeeblement of both of Palazzo Chigi and
Wilhelmstrasse, to guarantee in due time their full conformity.7
For a long time the Italian diplomatic institution had depended
on the Savoie monarchy. During the Giolitti period (1901-1914) the
Presidency of the Council had begun to obtain some degree of
autonomy, but the strength of the Minister of Foreign Affairs remained
intact. Diplomacy, as well as the army, remained generally an attribute
of the old aristocratic elite.
In this respect Germany presented a similar profile, with the
maintenance at Wilhemstrasse of the structures inherited from the
Empire. Versailles was debited to the politicians, and not to the
diplomats. Before Hitler assumed power, the diplomats at
Wilhelmstrasse, including von Neurath, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
had felt how the burden of political responsibility related to the
Versailles Treaty was an irretrievable damage. The Weimar Republic
had failed also in its attempt to integrate the military, despite the efforts
of Groener in the beginning of the years 1920 to promote a pacifist
revisionism with the Western powers. Hitler benefited therefore from
a favourable conjuncture in the old elite, due to the repulsion it felt
for the Weimar Republic. The Führer accepted without difficulty the
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
8 Salvatore Contarini had entered the PNF on March 3rd. 1926. According to Raffaele Guariglia,
during this period all the members of Italian diplomacy were subjected to the Party. See
R. Guariglia, Ricordi 1922-1946, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1949, p. 53.
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
made Commander of all the Armed Forces of the Reich. 9 The process
of “domestication” of the old ruling class had started in the beginning
of the 1930’s, and the Duce could now act as the lord of the state,
counting with the support of the army, in the context of his respect
for a certain autonomy of the military.10
In Germany, the entente with the old bureaucracy was
maintained at least until 1938, as a façade. The mistrust expressed by
Hitler was close to contempt, and in private he would say that the
Auswärtiges Amt was nothing but “an accumulation of debris of
intelligence”.11 The progressive acceptance of a radical revisionism by
the representatives of the old German elite, as von Neurath (in
diplomacy) and von Blomberg, was the cement of this acceptance.
However, despite this agreement in principle, Hitler tried to consolidate
his personal position in the centre of the Constitution of the Führerstaat
developed after the death of Hindenburg in August 1934. In this
way he was able to assimilate all the prerogatives of the presidential
function.
The reinforcement of Hitler’s personal position assumed the
form of an authentic constellation of “parallel organs”. Since the
beginning Hitler stimulated the creation of new structures within the
nazi party, like the Aussenpolitisches Amt, led by Alfred Rosenberg who
became in a way the nazi expert in matters of foreign policy. To
strenghten ties between the party and German expatriates, the creation
of the Auslandsorganisation (AO) had the effect of doubling
institutional diplomacy. This organization was the equivalent of the
Italian fasci all’ Estero, whose secretary (Giuseppe Bastianini) until 1926
was a member of the Fascist Grand Council. In the beginning of the
1930’s the Fasci all’Estero were inserted into the Ministry of Foreign
9 On Mussolini’s power deficit in his interventions in military matters, due to the Germans,
see H. von Kotze, Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938-1943: Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel,
DVA, Stuttgart, 1974, p. 98.
10 McGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941 : Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
12 E. Franzina, M. Sanfilippo, Il Fascismo e gli Emigrati: La Parabola dei Fasci Italiani all’Estero
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
Fascist and nazi thinking did not exhibit a spirit of system that
could be compared with those of Marx or Hegel. More than an
ideology stricto sensu, it proposed a certain relationship with the world.
Facing the rational universe of bourgeoisie, fascist thinking preached
the brutal force of being, glorified of the power of élan vital, the
triumph of the body and energy. Mussolini thought that the whole
culture was included in the same life cycle that gave it a meaning.
According to Georges Mehlis, a German who had lived in Italy in the
1920’s, this was the essence of fascism. Mussolini and his doctrine
were related to the greatest cultural phenomenon of modern times
(Kulturerscheinung der Gegenwart).14 Beyond the differences between
the two concepts there was the same principle: life, the source of
everything, existed in the interior of a culture defined as a living
organism. To resort to the formulation used by Spengler in his Decline
of the West, cultured man receives his energy from his own interior,
whereas civilized man does it from the exterior.15 Therefore imperialism
was associated to aggressiveness, understood as a natural aspect of
Western man. As Mussolini himself expressed it to the Italian Senate
on the 28th. May 1926, “every living being must have an imperialist
nature” and in this context the imperialism of the Italian people was a
normal phenomenon, apropriate to a power such as Italy. An analogous
proposition was advanced by Adolf Hitler in a speech made in Erlangen
on November 13th. 1930: “All beings tend to expand, and every people
tends to rule the world”.16 Related to the cycle of life, the world of
culture was also exposed to decay. For Niezsche this was a phenomenon
entirely natural, and consequently unavoidable. The famous formula
extracted from the fragment dated of Spring 1888 stated: “Man makes
no progress”.
14 G. Mehlis, Die Idee Mussolinis und der Sinn des Faschismus, Leipzig, Verlag E. Haberland,
1928, p. 16. This book had been translated into Italian in 1930.
15 D. Pelken, Oswald Spengler: Konservativer Denker zwischen Kaiserreich und Diktatur,
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
17On the racial dogma and its implications see K. Hildebrand, Deutsche Aussenpolitik
1933-1945: Kalkül oder Dogma?, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1990, p. 138.; H. Gramml,
Rassismus und Lebensraum: Völkermord im Zweiten Weltkrieg, In: K. D. Bracher, M.
Funke, H. A.Jacobsen, Deutschland 1933-1945, op. cit., p. 440-51.
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
18 R. de Felice, Mussolini il Duce: Gli Anni del Consenso, 1929-1936, Torino, Einaudi, 1974,
p. 38.
19 G.Mehlis, Die Idee Mussolinis, op. cit., p. 83-4.
20 On this point see the conclusions of G. Mosse. In: L’Uomo e le Masse nelle Ideologie
Nazionaliste, Bari, Laterza, 1988, p. 245. However, this author refused De Felice’s point of
view that Fascism was a prolongation of Iluminist philosophy.
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
21 G. Ciano, Journal Politique, 1937-1938, Paris: Les Editions de Paris, 1949, p. 219, July
10th. 1938.
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
22 On the foreign policy of Italy see E. Di Nolfo, Mussolini e la Politica Estera Italiana
1919-1933, Padova, Cedam, 196; E. Aga-Rossi, La Politica Estera e l’Impero, In: Storia
d’Italia (G. Sabbatucci and V. Vidotto) Guerre e Fascismo, 4, Bari, Laterza, 1997, p. 245-303 ;
R.J.B. Bosworth, S. Romano, La Politica Estera Italiana 1860-1985, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991.
23 A. Kallis, Territory and Expansionism, op. cit., p. 69.
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DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
100
FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
101
DIDIER MUSIEDLAK
26 A. Del Boca, Le Guerre del Fascismo, Bari, Laterza, 1995; A. Sbacchi, Legacy of Bitterness:
Ethiopia and Fascist Italy, 1935-1941, Lawrenceville, 1997.
27 F. Gilbert, Ciano and his Ambassadors, In: G. A. Craig, F. Gilbert, The Diplomats
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FASCISM, FASCIST REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICIES
28 MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War,
Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 289.
29 G. Procacci, L’Italia nella Grande Guerra, In: Storia d’Italia (G. Sabbatucci and V. Vidotto),
1997, p. 440.
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Lebensraum. From that point onwards war has shown the double aspect
that it would maintain until the end: on the Western front a classic war
against France, a demonstration of German power (Grossmachtpolitik);
on the East a new type of war, conceived as the destruction of local
populations (O. Bartov, U. Herbert). But it was too early for the
realization of the vast continental empire that Hitler since 1933 had
projected. In 1940, he found himself in the situation which he expected
for 1943.32 At mid-September 1940, the Führer seemed to accept
provisionally the temporary solution proposed by Ribbentrop: a
continental bloc joining Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union,
with the possible inclusion of Spain and the Vichy regime.33 Only
after the failure of Molotov visit to Berlin, in November 1940, the
decision to invade the Soviet Union was formally taken. In June
Operation Barbarossa, planned for March 1941, was posponed due
to the enlargement of the Balkans campaign. Hitler was now engaged
in fighting his war, a genuine cruzade against bolchevism, a war
conceived also as a racial conflict to destroy the enemy “jew-bolshevik”.
At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa Hitler counted with the
support of the whole national structure, army plus ministry of foreign
affairs, that accepted not only his program of conquest but also the
policy of mass destruction of entire populations.
No doubt there is a certain proximity in terms of identity
between Italian fascism and German nazism, based on their
expansionist logic in foreign policy, that tended to reflect the ideological
options of the two regimes, and became in time and according to
their respective modalities one of the mechanisms of the totalitarian
State tuned on a certain type of war and domination. Due to this
growing homology of domestic and external policies, it may seem
legitimate to question the pertinency of separating these two spheres,
internal and external, as both were at the service of the same project.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND FOREIGN POLICY
STRATEGIES IN THE POST-SOVIET ENVIRONMENT
Vladimir Kulagin
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for the West and return into the fold of Hobbs/Kissinger pragmatic
realpolitik to understand the behavior of the countries at the periphery
of democracy? Before coming to such a conclusion it would be prudent
to examine the above mentioned general trends in more detail, to put
them into a bigger picture of the current global politics and to consider
them in a longer term perspective.
To start such an analysis it is necessary to find out with what
kind of political regimes we are dealing in the post-Soviet space. To
assess and to measure the substance of a particular regime it is necessary
first of all to agree on a common yardstick. It is well known that the
political science is still in search of a universally accepted descriptive
definition of a democracy and of quantitative indicators that would
allow us to register the place of a particular polity on a continuous
scale. So, for practical purposes we use in this analysis the data and
indicators of the Freedom House annual surveys, leaving aside for
further theoretical discussion the reservations regarding the ‘personal
and intuitive’ character of Raymond Gastil’s rating system.
The results of these surveys indicate that the 15 states that became
independent after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 now
form three clusters of political regimes.1 The first one consists of three
Baltic states which are rated “free”:2
1 The following table is based on Freedom in the World 2002. Liberty’s Expansion in a
Turbulent World.
2 It is necessary to remind that PR and CL stand for Political Rights and Civil Liberties,
respectively; 1 represents the most free and 7 the least free rating.
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5 Motyl, Alexander J. Ten Years after the Soviet Collapse: Persistence of the Past and
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6 Shevtsova, Lilia. Boris Yeltsin and His Regime: Moscow: Moscow Center of Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, 1999.
7 Vankin, Sam. Russia’s Second Empire. davidjohnson@erols.com January 11, 2003.
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8 Shevtsova, Lilia. Russia Prior to Elections: A Chance for Comprehension. Briefing Papers,
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9 It seems that some practitioners of the world politics intuitively felt this causal relationship
between a regime and its foreign policy long before the scholars discovered it. In the long
run Woodrow Wilson, Aristide Briand, Gustav Streseman and Philip John Noel-Baker
turned out to be more realistic in their vision of an alliance of ‘non-despotic’ nations than
their realpolitik critics. Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan
fought and won the ‘Cold War’ in a belief that promotion of democracy is not less important
for the world security than power politics. Bill Clinton’s ‘Enlargement and Engagement’
strategy turned out to be rather effective for the perestroika of the world politics after the
Cold War.
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Ironically, the Marxists and especially the Leninists were the first
(after Immanuel Kant) to discover a causal relationship between
domestic functioning of a regime and its foreign policy although in a
mirror inverted form of the primacy of class struggle. They believed
that foreign policy was in general a continuation of a domestic policy.
That is why Vladimir Lenin was so enchanted by the Clausewitzian
definition of war as the pursuit of political goals by other means,
interpreting it as an additional proof of a linkage between domestic
and foreign policy. Although practical Marxism, as implemented by
Stalin and his successors, degenerated rapidly into a propagandist cover
of a traditional empire-building policy with Byzantine flavor, this
dictum about an indivisible link between the substance of domestic
regime and its foreign policies was a commonplace of the international
studies during the Soviet period. Miraculously, in the midst of
Gorbachev’s perestroika the formula abruptly disappeared from
theoretical studies and mass media reports on foreign policy and
international relations.
In late 80s the end of the Cold War was explained in the
paradigm of a peaceful coexistence between socialism and capitalism
in the globalizing environment, when in Gorbachev’s words ‘interests
of the humankind could supersede class interests’. After the dissolution
of the Soviet Union there were two rival philosophies guiding the
search for Russia’s new place in the world. The official version of the
‘early Yeltsin’s’ foreign policy strategy just stated the need for Russia to
be integrated into the Western civilization to create the best possible
conditions for domestic reforms.10 The other was suggesting the
search of a ‘uniquely Russian Eurasian third way’ of development.11
In the middle of 90s these two schools of thought blended into
a hybrid strategy of restoring the role of the state (derzhava) in domestic
politics combined with a growing readiness to act against the United
States and the West in general when their actions, particularly plans
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12 Primakov, Ye. ‘Russia: Reforms and Foreign Policy’, Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn, 1997, nº 7.
13 Press reports on President Yeltsin’s visit to the Foreign Ministry in 1997.
14 Diplomatichesky Vestnik, Special Issue (January 1993) 3.
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(The World in XXI Century: A Multipolar Balance of Power or a Global Pax Democratica).
Polis, nº 1, 2000.
17 Tzygankov, P.A. Teoriya mezhdunarodnych otnosheniy (Theory of International Relations),
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course during the last decade, the constant turns of the foreign policy
of Ukraine from the Western to the Russian orientation and in the
opposite direction, the initial hesitations of the leaders of the Central
Asia on the American presence before the operation in Afghanistan,
followed by an enthusiastic support.
It is very difficult to generalize on the casual relationship between
a regime and its foreign policy because foreign policy has certain degree
of autonomy. For, example, even different US Administrations
establish different order of priorities to achieve the common long-
term goals. Foreign policies have to take into account ‘national interests’
that have their national peculiarities and traditions even among
democratic regimes. It is enough to compare foreign policies of the
US, France, Japan or Canada. The dominant external mega-trends
like globalization limit the freedom of foreign policies of any regime.
The new independent states were born and are developing in different
environments, have different foreign policy potentials. All this said, it
seems that in the process of interaction of the world community it is
still possible to pinpoint some common features that distinguish
behavior of different regimes.
For the following analysis we would apply the same
methodology is used to explain the phenomena of democratic peace.18
There are two ways in which democracy might account for the existence
of such a peace. The first, the cultural / normative model, argues that
in democracies decision-makers follow norms of peaceful conflict
resolution that reflect domestic experiences and values. Because
democracies are biased against resolving domestic disputes violently,
they try to resolve international disputes in a similarly peaceful manner,
especially when they deal with other democracies. The second
explanation is the structural/institutional model. It argues that domestic
institutional constrains, including checks and balances, separation of
powers, and the need for a public debate, will slow or constrain decisions
to go to war.
18 See, for example, Russett, Bruce. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a
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the need for public support at the ballot box are more operational.
Though liberal parties and independent public organizations are political
minorities in ‘partly free’ post-Soviet states, their opposition to the
voluntarism of executive powers as well as a debate on domestic and
international relations issues in mass media, however restricted,
additionally restrain the amplitude of foreign policy fluctuations.
Again, these structural / institutional restraints of the transitional
regimes should not be exaggerated. Immediately after the terrorist attack
on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon President Putin held a meeting
with legislative leaders to seek their advice on the position Russia should
take on an eventual US military operation in Afghanistan. It was
reported that of 21 statesmen present 19 advised that Russia should
maintain neutrality, 2 advocated support of such an American
operation, and one legislator was in favor of Russia supporting the
Taliban. It is well known how Putin used that advice. On the other
hand the opposition in Ukraine is quite influential in pushing Kuchma’s
administration toward more consistent orientation towards the Euro-
Atlantic community.
It is also important to take into account the influence of the
various interest groups on foreign policies of the post-Soviet regimes
–business, army and security apparatus. As a rule their influence depends
on the degree of concentration of the central power. Autocratic regimes,
more dependent on the support by these groups, at the same time
tend to control them more tightly. But when they loosen their control
and the reform and democratization processes gain momentum these
interest groups acquire more freedom to express their preferences for
certain course of domestic and foreign policies. Very often there is a
clash of interests of these groups or of their individual members. For
example, the majority of Russian oligarchs prefer stable relations with
outside world as a precondition for their entering the world markets.
But representatives of the military-industrial complexes tend to
underline the state of alertness against any potential outside enemy.
On the initial stages of democratization the control of civilian powers
over military as a rule becomes more problematic. The role of the
interest groups on foreign policy of partly free regimes has not been
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studied in detail, but it seems safe to suggest that it differs from the
role such interest groups play in consolidated democracies.
Many authors offer a somewhat different yardstick for measuring
the relationship between transitional domestic regimes and their foreign
policies. For example, Sherman Garnett believes that weak states “are
the most dangerous element of instability and the most likely source
of new trouble sports in the decades to come”.19 It is partially true.
On the other hand, every change is by definition a denial of stability.
Loosening of a centralized state control over society, an entrance of
new non-governmental actors and lobbies into the political process as
well as the temptation of various groups inside the government to
pursue their own interests domestically and internationally in general
diminish stability and predictability of behavior of such states. For
example, some analysts argue that under Yeltsin there were several
autonomous and often contradictory foreign policies – those of the
Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Atomic Power, the military-
industrial complex as well as of some regional governors. More than
that, Yeltsin was forced to ‘correct’ his foreign policy course to neutralize
the formidable Communist opposition, especially on the eve of
elections or in times of domestic crises, as it happened after the 1998
financial melt-down.
But ‘strong’ regimes could pose much greater dangers to the
world security. Very strong regimes in Iraq and North Korea are creating
much more problems than all ‘weak’ states. The rather ‘weak’ partly
free regime of Kuchma in Ukraine is less dangerous for the European
community than the ‘strong’ not free Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus.
The rivalry between strong Uzbekistan and Kazahstan for the leadership
in Central Asia is one of the challenges for security in the region. It is
true that Putin’s Russia with its strong ‘verticality of power’ is more
predictable today than it was in more anarchic times under weak
Yeltsin. But one should not forget that this new stability and
predictability of the current Russian regime rests in greater degree than
19 Garnett, Sherman W., Troubles to come: The Emerging Security Challenges in the
Balkans and the Former Soviet Union. Nations in Transit 2001, 31.
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It is sufficient to say that the author shares the formula by Winston Churchill to the effect
that democracy is far from the perfect way of government, but all the other known regimes
are less effective and human.
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY...
$
POLITICAL REGIMES AND INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY:
IS THERE A EUROPEAN SPECIFICITY?
Denis Rolland
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1. GENERAL PROBLEMS
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POLITICAL REGIMES AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY...
1 Due to a lack of information on the preliminary motives behind internet site construction,
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foreign policy very much turned toward little syntheses of the type:
“The Long-term Stable Constructive Partnership Between China and
the European Union”,5 “Establishment of Sino-French Diplomatic
Relations”6 (www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/5689.html), “China and Brazil”
(www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/4320.html)... Nevertheless, as one might
expect, this diplomatic history of China is strictly limited to the
communist era. Imperial and republican China before Mao receive no
space, however minimal, in this external presentation of Chinese history.
At least in the English version, partial historical amnesia depends upon
a policy of deliberate selectivity, a policy that censures any mention of
other regimes besides the present one.
The case of Japan’s MOFA is noticeably different. The English
site of the Japanese Ministry (www.mofa.go.jp) is also very detailed,
including a remarkable double-entry system: 13 or 55 categories
proposed on the home page alone! Yet history is not visibly a
preoccupation here (no entry proposed from the outset) nor even a
global concern (there is no general history of the Ministry). Starting
from the rubrics “Postwar Issues” (www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/
index.html) and “Culture”, one comes upon the Bluebook (a publication
of diplomatic documents from recent years, accessible on line beginning
in 1994); there is nothing earlier. A thorough search, however, reveals
that the category “Regional Affairs” contains quite a few little historical
notes concerning Japanese foreign relations (www.mofa.go.jp/region),
though these are of an uneven depth. In that part dedicated to the
Near East, for instance, the author refers to a “Silk Road” between
Japan and the United States (www.mofa.go.jp/region/middle_e/
relations/history.html). History, however, begins with the “Japanese
defeat” and no mention is explicitly made of regime change
(www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-am/us/relation.html) or relations with the
European Union before 1991 (www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/eu/
overview/history.html)...
5 The stable and constructive long-term partnership between China and the European Union.
6 The establishment of Sino-French diplomatic relations.
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are less important, less widely studied, and less often recognized than
in the French case. The internet site of the Belgian ministry of foreign
affairs is a reflection of this unrealized aggiornamento in Belgian
institutional history.
Apropos extra-European comparisons, the site of Mexico’s
Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (www.sre.gob.mx) gives an important
place to history (five out of fourteen categories) (www.sre.gob.mx/
acerca/sre/historiasre.htm). But this long exposé (21 pages) is only linear
at a glance. In fact, great emphasis is placed on the twentieth-century
(16 pages) and, more particularly, on recent years (8 pages). In a country
with a first-rate historiography and a well-developed history of
international relations, the terminology of chronological de-coupling
in terms of which the six (very unequal) periods of Mexican history
are presented is rather surprising. Indeed, the manner in which these
periods are joined one to the other gives the impression that the site
was developed less under the aegis of directed revision than by simple
accumulation. After a section on the “Nineteenth-century” follows an
elliptical “dawn of the twentieth-century” where one might have
expected the word “Revolution”. Following an astonishingly precocious
(from the perspective of traditional Mexican historiography) “post-
revolutionary step” from 1917 to 1946 comes a “modern step”, covering
the period from 1946 to 2000. This category is extended to include
the “end of the twentieth-century” where the reforms of 1998 are
evoked. There is also a section on the “new millennium” touching
upon, without quite saying so, the end of the Revolutionary-
Institutional Party’s hegemony and the rise to power – this time
explicitly noted – of the Partido de Accion Nacional (PAN). Of all the
entries in this category, only the latter appears in boldface on the site,
insisting on the fact that “today we can speak of a democratic Mexico”.
The fundamental twentieth-century regime change represented by the
Revolution, in other words, is, if not quite erased, at the very least
played down in the representation of the Mexican past. This
representation remains very much engaged with the present and
deliberately open to the future.
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8 In 1991, the decision was taken to name it the Ministry of Foreign Relations. However,
this site is still signed “department of the MID” in December 2001. Where relevant, it is
always the MID that is cited.
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to be found at work in the Italian, Brazilian, and even the French sites.
Finally – and this is the third characteristic of the site – the MID
inscribes its policy in a very long term perspective, extending Russian
foreign policy all the way back to the political foundation of Russia.
The first part of the exposé begins with the ninth-century (even France,
though very conscious of its history and the antiquity of that history,
does not dare go so far), a date that, it is true, is commonly accepted as
the birth of Russia (the MID was only created under this name in
1802). Russia is thus presented as taking part for over a millennium in
world-historical stakes. This is a Russia with a relentlessly active foreign
policy, one that is just as present in Byzantium as in contemporary
globalization, the principal agent in the struggle against fascism and
the decisive partner in the Détente...
Portugal’s Ministério dos Negocios Estrangeiros has created a
detailed an well-illustrated site in which history enjoys a prominent
place (www.min-nestrangeiros.pt/mne), occupying – albeit modestly
– the third of seven categories (with three sub-categories out of 28).
The “Aspectos Historicos” consists of three elements. The briefest of
these, “História da Instituição”, is half a page in length (www.min-
nestrangeiros.pt/mne/historia). The “Sinopse da Historia Diplomatica
portuguesa”, for its part, is in fact a simple (and undated) list of
sovereigns and is followed by a long and detailed chronology that
includes, with dates, the ministers of foreign affairs and the principal
events chosen by a diplomat (www.minestrangeiros.pt/mne/
histdiplomatica/principal.html). The historical presentation closes with
a series of “discussions”, “Discursos”. However, in focusing its very
detailed chronology (36 pages) on the ministry, its ministers, and the
history of diplomatic relations, this part of the site does something
remarkable (www.minnestrangeiros.pt/mne/histdiplomatica/
sino36.html): nowhere is regime change mentioned. Indeed, the name
of Salazar only appears in 1936 and then simply to acknowledge,
without offering the reader any indication of his principal function,
that he had taken provisional charge of the Ministry...9 There is thus
9 The name next appears in 1942, 1943, and 1957.
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March 2002, this part of the site has only been completed for the
period of Independence (the French site, in this respect, is complete).
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11 Les Affaires étrangères et le corps diplomatique français, vol. II, CNRS, Paris: 1984.
12 The treatment of the Second World War in this site seems to have given way to ample
debates in the Ministry but the tradition denying all overlap between the Third Republic
and Free France seems to have resolutely swept it away.
13 Baudoin stepped down after Montoire, Laval taking charge of the Ministry.
14 “Laval Pierre. Senator, President of the Council, died 15 October 1945. 14 January – 21
February 1932; 13 October – 7 June 1935, thrice minister; 7 June 1935 – 24 January 1936,
Senator, President of the Council, Minister for the fifth time. 18 April 1942 – August 1944,
Minister of the Vichy government” www.diplomatie.gouv/fr/archives/expo/140/2guer/
08.html .
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
Christopher Coker
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in 1917, the year that Lenin took Russia out of it when he concluded
peace with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. When the Soviet Union re-
emerged into history once again in 1945 many American Presidents
in dealing with it found inspiration in Wilson’s vision of a world made
safe for democracy. Lyndon Johnson often quoted Wilson’s assertion
that “we created this nation not to save ourselves but to save mankind”.
Jimmy Carter tells us in his memoirs that when he pondered what to
say in his inaugural address Wilson’s speeches influenced him the most.2
If Woodrow Wilson affords one element of continuity in
twentieth century American foreign policy Jackson Turner affords
another. It is to Turner that we must first turn if we are to understand
what is most consistent about the foreign policy of the United States:
the fact that it is a country that has been sustained by a national myth,
and a myth that is inherently modern.
2 Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: memoirs of a President. New York: 1982, p. 19.
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
3 Each generation produces fresh commentaries on Turner. See for example Benson, L,
Turner and Beard: American historical writing reconsidered. New York: Free Press, 1960;
Billington, R. A. (ed), Frontier Thesis: valid interpretation of American history? New York:
Holt, Rienhart & Winston, 1966. Noble, D, Historians against History: the frontier thesis and
the national covenant in American historical writing since 1830. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1965.
4 Richard Etulain, Writing Western History: essays on Western major historians. Albuquerque:
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The fact that in the multiethnic society the United States became
in the course of the twentieth century the ethnic factor might be
exploited by others was to endure well into the twentieth century.
One hundred and fifty years later the same question was posed by
Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind. America,
he insisted, “cannot be sustained if the people keep only to their own
ways and remain perpetual outsiders. The society has got to turn them
into Americans”.7 In that sense, foreign policy was indeed domestic
policy writ large.
2. Turner’s writing struck such a chord because it tapped into an
American imagination at a particular moment in its history – on the
eve of the Spanish-American War (1898) when it was at its most self
–confident. It was a mood captured by Joseph Conrad in Nostromo
especially in the person of one of its chief characters, the Yankee
businessmen Holroyd, who we are told, has “the temperament of a
Puritan and an insatiable imagination of conquest”. Holroyd has a
globalising eye, and an implicit belief that the twentieth century will
be America’s. “We will be giving the word for everything: industry,
trade, journalism …we shall run the world’s business whether the world
likes it or not. The world can’t help it and neither can we”.8
The frontier myth was important for the sense of mission it
imparted to American policy abroad. Turner had insisted that the land
in the West had the power to shape America’s political, economic and
cultural institutions and, in particular, its commitment to democracy.
For the frontier myth stressed the exceptional character of American
nationality: a free people creating a free land. And free land was not
the empty space of geographers. It was time as well, for Turner created
a timeless or historical uniqueness to America which gave the frontier
a determining power over different generations. What Turner produced
was what he himself called “the national history of the American spirit”
which could also account for the development of the spirit after 1890,
the year in which the frontier was finally closed. In the coal barons,
7 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, New York: 1986.
8 Joseph Conrad, Nostromo, London: Penguin, 1990, p. 94-951.
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
steel kings, oil kings and railway magnates of twentieth century America
he saw a new social dynamics. Even in the robber barons of his own
day he saw the same “constructive fever … to seek new avenues of
action and power…” to express the horizon of the nation’s activity.9
3. Above all, Turner’s thesis should be seen as only one of a
series of nineteenth century myths which so much influenced the
twentieth century state that the US was to become. As Dean Acheson
recognised in the 1960s, “we are not a twentieth century people: we
are a nineteenth century people: our minds are not our own but our
great grandparents’ minds”.10 The nineteenth century, the historian
Norman Stone once observed, had all the ideas; the twentieth century
had the technology to realise them, to carry them out. This was the
unique dialectic of America’s engagement with the world.
Turner’s thesis, to be sure, was only one of a number of
nineteenth century myths (retributive justice in the Wild West was
another – as we shall see) all of which inspired US policy makers as the
twentieth century unfolded. What the paper Turner drafted for
Woodrow Wilson shows is that every generation recreated a myth or
tradition by inspiring different policymakers at different times.
AMERICAN MODERNITY
history in Cologne-Broukes (ed) Writing and America, London: Longman, 1996, p. 18.
10 Dean Acheson, This Vast Eternal Realm, New York: W. W. Norton, 1973, p. 172.
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CHRISTOPHER COKER
11 Talcott Parsons, The Evolution of Societies, Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice Hill, 1977, p. 182.
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
12 Ibid, p. 187.
13 Ibid, p. 191.
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CHRISTOPHER COKER
14 Charles and Mary Beard, America in mid-passage, New York: Macmillan, 1939, p. 437.
15 Perry Miller, The Puritans, v. 1, New York: Harper and Row, 1967, p. 11.
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
It was the old Puritan message, one which led him to conclude
that much of the Third World was largely responsible for its own
underdevelopment. This too was part of the frontier myth. For the
frontier was a civic space, a place where the lazy and slothful became
Americans through the challenge that it posed.
2. Parsons’ work is also important in its claims for American
universalism. In claiming that the United States was the most modern
society in the world he was putting forward an idea that was popular
for much of the twentieth century. If you want to see your own future,
visit New Year, declared a confident Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1962.
Today we have moved away from that position. Smuel Eisenstadt
writes that from the very beginning history uncovered ‘multiple
modernities’.18 If Europe got there first, its model was not exported.
And the very first society to reject it was the United States – not any of
16 Dean Acheson, Morning and Noon, Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1965, p. 18.
17 George Kennan, The Cloud of Danger, New York: Little and Brown, 1979, p. 112 .
18 Smuel Eisentstadt, ‘Multiple Modernities’, Daedalus 129:1 Winter 2000, p. 13.
159
CHRISTOPHER COKER
160
THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
20 See Denis Washburn, The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995, p. 7t.
21 For a discussion of ‘political religions’ see Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: a new history,
161
CHRISTOPHER COKER
22 Gary Wills.
23 John Lukacs, At the End of an Age, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 13.
162
THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
163
CHRISTOPHER COKER
164
THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
28 Cited in T Smith, America’s Mission: the United States and the worldwide struggle for
democracy, Princeton: N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997, p. 137.
29 Bird and J E Smith, The Spirit of American Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1963. See also H Puttanam, ‘William James’ ideas’, Raritan, 1989, v. 8, p. 27-44.
165
CHRISTOPHER COKER
basis (and thus popular appeal) of the intellectual class was broadened
in the 1930s by immigration from Eastern and Central Europe. With
the arrival of 300,000 or more intellectuals and academics – refugees
from Hitler’s New Order – the United States moved to the centre of
European thought. It found itself the home of some of the great centres
of European intellectual life – the Vienna circle which influenced
thought on mathematics, linguistics and philosophy; the Institute of
Mathematics at Gottingen; most of the members of the Frankfurt
School; and almost the entire staff of the Berlin School of Politics.
The playwright Bertold Brecht recognised the significance of
this exodus from the beginning. “Immigration is the best school of
dialectics. Refugees were the keenest dialectitions”, he claimed in his
book Refugee Dialogues; for “they are refugees as a result of change and
their sole object of study is change”.30 The generation that escaped
from Germany and Central Europe in the 1930s was conscious of its
own importance in the conflict that was about to unfold. Many, like
Hannah Arendt, moved from philosophy to political theory, from a
life of contemplation to one of action in recognition of the fact that
in the twentieth century the ‘political’ had an urgency that could no
longer be denied. Their personal encounter with totalitarianism
demanded that the US commit itself to the defence of democracy
worldwide. That commitment, in turn, was aided by the political
language they forged. In Chicago Hans Morgenthau and Leo Strauss
did much to invent the language of American realism in the 1950s.
Arendt was the first to coin the term ‘totalitarianism’.
What the refugees succeeded in doing was to involve their
adopted country in a historic dialogue with the Old World from which
they had fled. In so doing they made their own unique contribution
to the dialectics of the western alliance that became the cornerstone of
American foreign policy after 1941. Indeed like Turner himself in 1919
many American historians in the early years of the Cold War began to
insist that there was no American history as such, only western history.
30Cited Martin Jay, Permanent Exiles: essays on the intellectual migration from Germany to
America, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, p. 28.
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THE CONTINUITY OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
CONCLUSION
Space does not permit speculation about the future but I would
end on one other note struck by Parsons. His final conclusion was
that America represented the future of all Western societies. Yet in the
relatively short space of time which has elapsed since Parsons completed
his study twenty-five years ago it is clear that America’s principal allies
– the European powers – have become increasingly critical of the
American model which contrasts so markedly with their own. Contrary
to the bold closing assertion he offered “for the idea of the post-
modern… is premature”,32 European societies have become post-
modern states pursuing what Robert Cooper, the British diplomat,
calls ‘a post-modern foreign policy’.
In its refusal to follow its other Western partners down the
internationalist and transnational route (as evidenced by its apparent
‘unilateralism’) the United States will remain true to its own version
of modernity. But US foreign policy will become more exclusive than
inclusive. ‘Exceptionalism’ (not’ exemplarism’, or ‘redemptionism’)
may well be the new ideological glue that holds it together. As Agnes
Heller observes, the frontier thesis has another message: one linked to
the major ethical power of North Americans: the idea of justice. Like
the constitution, the myth involves not distributive justice, but
retributive justice. And it is around the idea of competitive justice that
31 Cited Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: the ‘objectivity’ question and the American historical
167
CHRISTOPHER COKER
American capitalism and the justice system itself now revolves. Central
to both is the idea of penalty and reward: those who are successful are
rewarded; those who fail, fail in spectacular fashion. The Europeans
are increasingly critical of this model which departs so radically from
their own social democratic first principles. Whether the western alliance
– the seed of which was contained in Turner’s 1919 paper – can survive
this critique is a moot question.
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&
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS
Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
I. INTRODUCCIÓN
1Ver por ejemplo, Cisneros, A. y Escudé, C. Historia general de las relaciones exteriores de la
República Argentina, 1era Parte, Buenos Aires, 2000.
169
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
170
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
171
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
2 Ver Oszlak, O, La formación del Estado argentino, Buenos Aires, 1997; Botana, N., El orden
172
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
173
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
3 Ver Alberdi, Juan B., Escritos póstumos, T III: Política exterior de la República Argentina,
Buenos Aires, 1896; Salas, Hugo R., Una política exterior argentina, Comercio exterior e ideas
en sus orígenes y consolidación (1862-1914), Buenos Aires, 1987.
174
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
4 Ver Paradiso, J, Debates y trayectoria de la política exterior argentina, cap. 1, Buenos Aires, 1993.
175
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
176
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
177
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
178
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179
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8Cf. Tulchin, J. A., La Argentina y los Estados Unidos, Historia de una desconfianza, Buenos
Aires, 1990, p. 114-115.
180
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181
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
182
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183
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184
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185
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
186
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11 Rapoport, M., Los partidos políticos y la Segunda Guerra Mundial. In: El Laberinto,
187
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
188
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
189
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
190
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191
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
192
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
15 Rapoport, M. y Laufer, R., Estados Unidos ante el Brasil y la Argentina: Los golpes
militares de la década de 1960. In: Rapoport, M., Tiempo de crisis, vientos de cambio... op. cit.
193
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
194
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
17 Rapoport, M. y Laufer, R., Estados Unidos ante el Brasil y la Argentina: los golpes militares de
O., (comp.), El capitalismo argentino en crisis, Buenos Aires, 1973; O’Donnell, G. “Estado y
alianzas en la Argentina, 1956-1976”, Desarrollo Económico, n° 64, Buenos Aires, enero-
marzo de 1977 y El Estado Burocrático Autoritario, Buenos Aires, 1982.
195
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del mundo bipolar, 1970-1990. In: Ciclos en la historia, la economía y la sociedad, n° 14-15,
1er Semestre de 1998, Buenos Aires, p. 113-147; Rapoport, M., La Argentina y la Guerra
Fría: opciones económicas y estratégicas de la apertura hacia el Este (1955-1973). In:
El Laberinto... op. cit. y La posición internacional de la Argentina y las relaciones argentino-
soviéticas. In: Perina, R. y Russell, R. Argentina en el mundo, 1973-1987, Buenos Aires,
1988, p. 171-207.
196
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
197
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
21 Cf. Puig, J. C., Doctrinas Internacionales y autonomía latinoamericana, cap. VII., Universidad
198
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
22 Ver Shvarzer, Jorge, La política económica de Martínez de Hoz, Buenos Aires, 1986; Ciafardini,
199
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
200
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
25 Ver Rapoport, M, Las relaciones argentino soviéticas. In: Perina, R. y Russell, R., op. cit.,
p. 199-200.
26 Alexei Manzhullo, viceministro sovético de comercio exterior, “Intercambio URSS-
Argentina”, Clarín, Buenos Aires, 16.1.1983; Nota de agencia Tass, La Nación, Buenos
Aires, 7.6.1981. Ver Vacs, A. Los socios discretos, Buenos Aires, 1974; Gilbert I. El oro de
Moscú, Buenos Aires, 1995.
201
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
202
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
203
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
28 El premio Nobel de la Paz argentino A. Pérez Esquivel denunció este respaldo soviético
a la dictadura argentina en el tratamiento de los desaparecidos en la Argentina, acusando a
la URSS de “imperialista y reaccionaria” y de apoyar a la dictadura fascista argentina. Ver
Revista Humor , n° 36, Buenos Aires, 1982. También el canciller del último turnio dictatorial,
Aguirre Lanari destacó que “los países socialistas... han acompañado a la Argentina... en la
cuestión de los derechos humanos”, La Prensa, Buenos Aires, 3.12.82.
29 Declaraciones de Gorbachov, Clarín, Buenos Aires, 6.12.1992.
204
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
205
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
del krill en el Atlántico Sur, inaugurando una línea de las relaciones bilaterales que continuaría,
luego de la Guerra de Malvinas, bajo el gobierno de Alfonsín, hasta la firma del convenio
ictícola de 1986, lo que generó como represalia por parte de Gran Bretaña la declaración de
la zona de pesca exclusiva en torno a las islas Malvinas.
32 Ver Rapoport M., Las relaciones argentino-soviéticas, op. cit., p. 182.
206
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
33 Ver. Russell R., Argentina y la política exterior... In: Russell R. y Perina, R., Argentina en
207
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
208
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
35 Ver Rapoport M. y Madrid E., Los países del Cono Sur y las grandes potencias. In:
Rapoport M. y Cervo A. L., (Comp.), El Cono Sur, una historia común, Buenos Aires, 2002.
36 Ver Quijada, M., El proyecto peronista de creación de un Zollverein sudamericano,
1946-1955. In: Ciclos en la historia, la economía y la sociedad n° 6, Buenos Aires, 1994; Moniz
Bandeira, L. A., Las relaciones en el Cono Sur: iniciativas de integración. In: Rapoport, M.
y Cervo, A. L. (comp.) El Cono Sur, una historia común, op. cit.
209
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
210
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
211
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212
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213
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214
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
215
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
216
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
217
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
218
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
219
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220
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221
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222
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
223
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41 Ver Rapoport, M., La Argentina y Estados Unidos: Un balance descarnado. In: Tiempos
de crisis, vientos de cambio, op. cit., p. 211-214; y Rapoport, M., Historia económica política y
social de la Argentina, op. cit., p. 950-958.
224
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Gobierno de Menem, Rosario, 1994, y La Política Exterior Argentina 1994-1997, Rosario, 1998.
225
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
226
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
43 Ver sobre el Mercosur y la política económica y exterior argentina, Ferrer, A., Los dos
modelos de Mercosur. Integración sostenible o consenso de Washington, Revista de la
Universidad de Buenos Aires, n° 6, noviembre de 1997; Bernal-Meza, Raúl, Las actuales
percepciones argentinas sobre la Política Exterior del Brasil y de sus relaciones con los
Estados Unidos. In: Ciclos en la historia, la economía y la sociedad, n° 18, Buenos Aires,
2º semestre de 1999; Rapoport, M. y colab., Historia económica, op. cit., cap. IX; Vitelli, G.,
Las rupturas de la convertibilidad y del Plan Real: la reiteración de una misma historia. In:
Ciclos en la historia, la economía y la sociedad, n° 23, Buenos Aires, 1er semestre de 2002.
227
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
228
MODELOS ECONÓMICOS, REGÍMENES POLÍTICOS Y POLÍTICA EXTERIOR ARGENTINA
44 Ver Laufer, R. y Spiguel, C., Las puebladas argentinas a partir del Santiagueñazo de 1993.
Tradición histórica y nuevas formas de lucha. In: López Maya, M. (comp.), Lucha popular,
democracia, neoliberalismo: protesta popular en América Latina en los años de ajuste, CEAP y
CENDES, Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1999.
229
MARIO RAPOPORT Y CLAUDIO SPIGUEL
45 Los individuos sólo son ciudadanos una vez cada cuatro, cinco o seis años, pero no tienen
ningún control sobre sus representantes políticos, que están sujetos, sin embargo, a los
intereses dominantes, internos y externos, a quienes rinden cuentas y con quienes cogobiernan.
La corrupción se ha transformado así en un rasgo estructural. Rapoport, M., La tensa
alquimia entre capitalismo y democracia. In: Tiempos de crisis, op. cit., p. 265-266.
230
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231
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232
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233
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Conflito e Integração na América do Sul. Brasil, Argentina e Estados Unidos. Da Tríplice Aliança
ao Mercosul 1870-2003, Rio de Janeiro, 2003.
234
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235
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
9
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y
BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
Raúl Bernal-Meza
INTRODUCCIÓN
237
RAÚL BERNAL-MEZA
238
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
2 Hemos definido éstos como aquellos que constituyen la esencia de la agenda post-guerra
fría, bajo el orden imperial, que sustituyeron los temas relevantes de la agenda internacional
de los años 70 y 80. Estos valores, que sustentan ahora la nueva configuración del sistema
internacional, como el liberalismo económico, los derechos humanos, la protección ambiental,
los derechos sociales, junto a los temas militar-estratégicos – bajo nuevas formas, vinculadas
a los nuevos conceptos de la seguridad – excluyen el tema del “desarrollo”. Cfr. Raúl Bernal-
Meza (2000:91-92). Asimismo, constituyen el fundamento de los instrumentos para mejorar
– supuestamente – la inserción internacional de los países en desarrollo, bajo el nuevo orden
político y económico de la globalización. Bernal-Meza, 2000:155. Algunos autores los han
definido como “valores hegemónicos internacionalmente reconocidos”. Vigevani, et. al, 1999.
3 En forma llamativamente similar a la que se formuló en Brasil con el “pragmatismo
239
RAÚL BERNAL-MEZA
4 El sentido que damos aquí al desarrollismo deriva de las interpretaciones sobre el proceso
de transformaciones del sistema mundial y de las políticas nacionales necesarias para enfrentar
sus desafíos. Esta visión mantenía continuidades como el neo-keynesianismo, respecto del
papel del Estado como conductor del desarrollo y actor esencial de la asignación de recursos
y del realismo, en la percepción de las características de un sistema internacional dominado
por los imperativos del poder.
5 Desarrollado por Peter Haas, bajo la denominación de “comunidades epistémicas”,
240
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
6 Si bien bajo la gestión de Alfonsín se había comenzado a reformular el rol del Estado, sobre
todo desde el ministerio conducido por Terragno, con Menem el proceso de reforma y
privatizaciones del Estado se acelera, bajo el paradigma neoliberal.
7 Para la interpretación “fundamentalista”o “ideológica” de la globalización, ver Ferrer
241
RAÚL BERNAL-MEZA
8 Ver, a este respecto, Raúl Bernal-Meza, América Latina en la Economía Política Mundial
(1994); segunda parte, cap. 1.
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243
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244
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
245
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246
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
Cingapura” (marzo de 1997), citado por Kjeld Aagaard Jakobsen, O Que Esperar da Política
Externa Brasileira?, Carta Internacional, n° 94/95, dezembro 2000/janeiro 2001; p. 10-12.
247
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248
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
11 Ver, por ejemplo, Amado Luiz Cervo. Dice este autor que bajo la presidencia de Cardoso
249
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250
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
12 Fernando Sánchez Zinny, “El destino latinoamericano”, La Nación Line, 9 de febrero de 2003.
251
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252
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
253
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Estado con un tipo particular de política exterior, en los principales países de la región. Cfr.
Cervo (1994; 2000; 2001; 2002).
254
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
15 Para una profundización de la política exterior chilena bajo el gobierno militar, cfr.
Muñoz, Heraldo (1986) y Bernal-Meza, Raúl (1989; 1989ª).
16 Coalición que gobierna Chile desde el retorno a la democracia, integrada por los partidos
255
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17 Uno de los principios fundamentales impuestos por el estadista Diego Portales en el inicio
256
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
18 Fuente: Diario La Nación, Buenos Aires, 13 de noviembre de 2002; sección Económica, p. 13.
257
RAÚL BERNAL-MEZA
19 Peter Hakim (Presidente del “Inter-American Dialogue”), por ejemplo, ha señalado que
México y Brasil han querido alcanzar importantes roles internacionales de formas totalmente
distintas, el primero atrelou o seu futuro aos Estados Unidos e abriu a economia quase que
totalmente ao comércio e investimento estrangeiros; el segundo sendo uma economia relativamente
fechada, almeja um papel de liderança independente na América do Sul e é visto pelos Estados
Unidos como oponente em determinados asuntos (…). La principal prioridad de la política
exterior mexicana continua a ser uma sólida parceria com os Estados Unidos (…). O Brasil, ao
contrário, conduz uma política externa muito mais autônoma e diversificada; cfr. Peter Hakim,
Brasil e México: duas maneiras de ser global, Política Externa, São Paulo, Paz e Terra/USP,
v. 10, n° 4, março, abril-maio 2002, p. 94-107.
258
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POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
A) ASPECTOS COMPARATIVOS
internacional.
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268
POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
B) AGENDAS
formulador argentino, ver, Carlos Escudé (1992; 1995). Para nuestra interpretación, Raúl
Bernal-Meza (1994; 1999).
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DIPLOMACIA ECONÓMICA
CONSENSOS INTERNOS
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POLÍTICA EXTERIOR DE ARGENTINA, CHILE Y BRASIL: PERSPECTIVA COMPARADA
29 Cfr. Raúl Bernal-Meza (2002), Os dez anos do Mercosul e a crise argentina. Política
Externa.
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BIBLIOGRAFÍA CITADA:
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276
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME:
THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
Wolfgang Döpcke
I. INTRODUCTION
1 Mills, G. & Baynham, S., South African Foreign Policy, 1945-1990. In: Mills, G. (ed),
From Pariah to Participant: South Africa’s Evolving Foreign Relations, 1990-1994, Johannesburg:
(SAIIA) 1994, p.11.
277
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2Barber, J. & Barratt, J., South Africa’s Foreign Policy. The Search for Status and Security,
1945-1988, Cambridge (CUP) 1990, p.1.
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FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
hampered South Africa’s ability as a normal state”.3 That was the origin
of a distinct foreign policy tradition, which, in the early 1990s, came
to influence South Africa’s new foreign policy.
The South African regime, in turn, sought to build its
international legitimacy within the ideological framework of the Cold
War divisions, projecting itself as an arduous defender of Western
political (and culturally Occidental) interests against the “communist
menace”. Although it did not achieve a formal alliance with Western
powers and a formal admittance into Western global defense strategy,
South Africa was rather successful – economically, ideologically and
politically – in forging links with the West.4 Consequently, much
more closely than other countries the regime’s existence became linked
to international politics, making the regime very susceptible to the
international political conjuncture. Thus, one can argue that, at least
partially, the regime was brought down by the international
environment – the end of Communism, sanctions and disinvestments,
and the massive Cuban and Soviet engagement in Angola.
Thirdly, the radical regime change in South Africa towards a
democratic and non-racial state inspired, it seems, an equally radical
reorientation in the country’s foreign policy. Aggressive destabilization
and non-declared wars against its neighbors gave way to a pacific, anti-
hegemonic multilateralism, guided by values such as the peaceful
resolution of conflicts, respect of its neighbors’ sovereignty, rule-based
interaction of the international community, multiparty democracy,
human rights and freedoms, non-racialism and non-sexism, among
others. Africa-centrism and the philosophy of “Third Worldism” and
Non-alignment substituted the desperate obsession of white-ruled
South Africa to project itself as part of a narrowly defined “Western “
or “European civilization” and of global anti-communism. Thus, the
change in foreign policy between the apartheid period and the new
3 Evans, G., South Africa in Remission. The Foreign Policy of an Altered State, Journal of
Modern African Studies, 34, 1996.
4 Borstelmann, Th., Apartheid’s Reluctant Uncle. The United States and Southern Africa in the
279
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South Africa, i.e. between two distinct regimes, could not have been
greater.
South Africa’s international insertions changed profoundly when
the apartheid regime was defeated: the former international pariah was
not only readmitted into the international community, with the end
of economic and other sanctions and its return to international
organizations, but also transformed itself into an highly esteemed
member of the international community, a fact which, combined with
Nelson Mandela’s moral standing and reputation, led to high, though
unrealistic, expectations and hopes about South Africa’s real
international power. Most dramatic was the country’s insertion into
the regional context. South Africa, which during the apartheid years
was perceived by its neighbors as the main – perhaps the only – security
threat in the region, and as the prime obstacle for peace and economic
and social development, was expected to change its regional role from
a coercive hegemon into a cooperative leader.
The empirical evidence for a close relation between regime change
– the transformation of apartheid South Africa into a democratic,
non-racial and Black-ruled state – and foreign policy change seems
overwhelming and in a certain way obvious. Nevertheless, a close
examination of the conduct of South Africa’s foreign policy in the
critical period since the early 1990s, as well as in a broader historical
context, casts some serious doubts on an intimate and mechanical nexus
between the nature of the regime and foreign policy.
In the first place, there were some dramatic changes in the
conduct of foreign policy, its perceptions, ideologies, instruments and,
at least, short-term aims during the apartheid years. There surely exist
fundamental differences between Verword’s “outward movement” of
the 1960s, the policy of détente, which lasted until the mid-1970s
and the “Total Strategy” of Botha’s government during the 1980s,
although all these major foreign policy shifts represent variations of
the principal theme of regime survival in different international and
regional environments.
Secondly, some of the major changes in the conduct of foreign
policy seem to have occurred well before a definite regime change.
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FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
5Southall, R., South Africa in Africa: foreign policy making during the apartheid era,
www.igd.org.za/pub/op.html, 1999.
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282
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
see: Hyam, R., The Failure of South African Expansion, 1908-1948, London: Macmillan,
1972. Chanock, M.: Unconsummated Union: Britain, Rhodesia and South Africa, 1900-45,
Manchester: Manchester UP, 1977.
283
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7 Bobbio, N., et.al., Dicionário de Política, Brasília: Edunb, 1992, p. 1081, (transl. by author).
284
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
285
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286
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
11 Wenzel, Cl., Die Südafrikapolitik der USA in der Ära Reagan. Konstruktives oder destruktives
Engagement, Hamburg: Institut für Afrikakunde, 1990. Marte, L. F.: Political Cycles
International Relations: the Cold War and Africa 1945-1990, Amsterdam: VU UP, 1994.
Laïdi, Z., The Superpowers and Africa. The Constraints of a Rivalry, 1960-1990, Chicago &
London: Chicago UP, 1990. Coker, C., The United States and South Africa, 1968-1985:
Constructive Engagement and its Critics, Durham: Duke University Press, 1986. But see as
well Martin, who argues that US policy towards Africa had been more tolerant and more
differentiated than the idea of an anti-communist crusade would suggest. Martin, B., American
Policy Towards Southern Africa in the 1980s. Journal of Modern African Studies, 27,1,
p. 23-46, 1989. See as well: Crocker, Ch., High noon in Southern Africa. Making Peace in a
Rough Neighborhood, New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1992.
287
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288
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
289
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the long period from 1945 to the early 1980s. Consequently, the
contested arena of South Africa’s international environment was not
so much the global but the regional environment in the African
continent. On this stage we can observe major foreign policy changes
within the apartheid regime since the end of the Second World War,
as well as surprising continuities between the last years of the apartheid
regime and the foreign policy of the ANC government after 1994.
South African foreign policy since the end of the Second World
War, focusing on the African and regional contexts has been divided in
various ways by the relevant literature. Although the creation of a non-
threatening, favorable regional and continental environment was the
dominant thread in South Africa’s regional policy, there were significant
shifts and changes in the policies to implement such objective. Barber
and Barratt, for example, try to understand the oscillations in South
African foreign policy as cycles of challenges and reactions. They
identify four major periods: 1945 to the early 1960s (reaction to
growing international hostility and to African Nationalism); early
1960s to 1974 (the challenge by decolonization and internal nationalism
was neutralized by economic growth and the ring of white territories);
1974 to 1984 (breakdown of white security ring) and from 1984-5
onwards (uprising and economic deterioration).12 Mills and Baynham
distinguish five periods until the demise of the apartheid regime: 1945
to 1960 (emergence of South Africa as an international pariah); 1961
to 1974 (the outward movement); 1975 to 1980 (Total National
Strategy); 1980 to 1984 (Regional repression and internal reform);
1985 to 1990 (from emergency to accord).13 Finally, Southall suggests
three main periods: 1948 to 1961 (resistance and adjustment to Africa’s
decolonization; 1961 to 1976 (emergence as “sub-imperial” power);
1976 to 1980s (transition from détente to destabilization).14 What
12 Barber, J. & Barratt, J., South Africa’s Foreign Policy, op. cit.
13 Mills, G. & Baynham, S., op. cit.
14 Southall, R., South Africa in Africa, op.cit.
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FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
emerges from these, and other periodizations, and what is relevant for
our argument, is that since 1945 the pursuit of the security interests of
South Africa in the sub-regional contest has produced at least three
very distinct sets of policies, each of them distinct in terms of immediate
objectives, policies and instruments.
Since the early 1950s, South African regional policy was put in
the defensive, despite sometimes spectacular temporary successes. It
reacted to challenges, which were considered to become more and
more threatening.15 The initial reaction to the increasingly hostile
international environment and the emergence of Black Nationalism
was the intensification of apartheid efforts. Regionally, the decade of
the 1950s was characterized by determined, though unsuccessful,
attempts to incorporate the HC Territories.
According to Southall, during the 1960s South Africa emerged
as the economic giant on the continent, a “sub-imperial” power. “The
most immediate manifestation of South Africa’s sub-imperial role was
its ‘outward’ policy: the systematic expansion of its relations with white-
controlled and any black-ruled states that were prepared to ignore their
distaste for apartheid in return for perceived material or political
advantage.”16 However, the “outward movement”, i.e. the attempt to
establish regular political and diplomatic relations with the African
community of states, was much more than a cynical strategy to lure
moderate states closer to South Africa by economic and financial bribes.
It had, as one underlying theme, clear economic interests and a broad
perspective of South Africa’s economic insertion into the continent.
One South African concern was the labour supply to its booming
economy, maintained, to an important degree, by migrant labour flows
from neighbouring countries. The maintenance of foreign migrant
labour flows from the whole of Southern Africa (Swaziland, Botswana,
Mozambique, Malawi and, to a minor degree, Angola) became an
important objective of the policy of rapprochement with African states.
15 See Barber and Barratt’s comprehensive study, which interprets South African foreign
policy as cycles of challenge and reaction. Barber, J. & Barratt, J. op. cit.
16 Southall, op. cit., p. 10.
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17 Legum, C., Southern Africa. The Secret Diplomacy, London: Rex Collings, 1975, p. 5.
292
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
293
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18 Legum, C., Southern Africa. The Secret Diplomacy, London: Rex Collings, 1975. Legum,
C.: Southern Africa: How the Search for Peaceful Change Failed. In: Legum, C. (org.), Africa
Contemporary Record 1975/1976, London: Rex Collings, 1976.
294
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
The suffering grass: superpowers and regional conflict in Southern Africa and the Caribbean,
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992. Grundy, K. W., The Militarization of South African Politics,
Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988.
21 Grundy, K. W., The Militarization of South African Politics, Oxford: Oxford University
295
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296
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forces along its more than 1000 kilometers of border with the Frelimo
state. But also the coming into office of a new US administration
under Jimmy Carter, initially with a stringent regionalist perspective
towards the conflicts in Southern Africa, strained US-South African
relations and made South Africa revive its attempts to achieve a
negotiated solution in Zimbabwe which would install a moderate Black
government. Reacting to these internal and external pressures, Smith
and Vorster launched the so-called “internal settlement”, which,
counting with the collaboration of one (or two) of the nationalist
leaders – Bishop Abel Muzorewa (and N. Sithole) – introduced a new
constitution, gave the country its first Black Prime Minister but left
power effectively in the hands of the white minority. It failed to curb
the violence and the guerilla campaign, which instead increased
dramatically in 1979, and did not receive international recognition.
When, in 1979, the new conservative British Government showed a
certain inclination to recognition of the Muzorewa government, it
was Nigeria’s firm posture and its economic power, as well as pressures
from the Commonwealth, which made M. Thatcher think twice.
Consequently, the revival of Anglo-American constitutional proposals
led to the convening of the Lancaster House Conference in December
1979, this time including the two liberation movements, which in
the end were forced by the Frontline States to accept a negotiated
solution. Britain’s and South Africa’s approval of free elections in
Zimbabwe were based on the conviction, that the moderate Bishop,
instead of the “communist terrorists”, would win such elections,
especially considering the massive assistance he was receiving from the
Botha government. Another miscalculation! In the March 1980
elections, Mugabe’s Zanu won 51 out of 80 seats – Muzorewa won
only 3 – and subsequently formed a coalition government with
Nkomo’s Zapu, giving the nationalists an overwhelming majority in
the country’s first majority-ruled parliament.
As a result, in 1980 the cordon sanitaire finally collapsed and
South Africa saw itself surrounded by African states, very likely to
assume a proactive, hostile policy vis-à-vis the apartheid regime and to
support the South African liberation movements. This transformed
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regional situation, the growing internal insecurity and the first signs of
growing international effective hostility towards the regime (UN arms’
embargo) brought to a final end the détente approach and led to a
dramatic reformulation of South Africa’s regional policy and the
launching of the “Total National Strategy”. This radical security policy
was based on the classical “zero-sum” game philosophy of a communist
threat, i.e. attributed all security threats to the regime (for example
the encircling of South Africa by “radical” regimes, the political and
military campaigns in favour of a non-racist and democratic state carried
out by SWAPO and the ANC, as well as the internal resistance) to
one single cause: the so-called “total onslaught” by Marxism,
communism and the Soviet Union. This “total attack” had to be
countered by a “total strategy” in order to secure South Africa’s survival.
Although “total strategy” had been “pre-thought” and conceptualized
within the South African Ministry of Defense already in 1977, it
only came to be applied after détente was in shatters with Mugabe’s
victory in Zimbabwe, and when the resurgence of a Cold War
fundamentalism in US foreign policy created a permissive international
environment.
South African “Total Strategy” combined, in its regional focus,
the following elements:
1) Direct military destabilization by rather large-scale military
interventions and conventional warfare, without a formal declaration
of war (in Angola from 1981 onwards).
2) Open combat assistance to insurgency groups (to Angola’s
Unita from 1981 onwards).
3) Financial and logistical assistance, provision of training
facilities, arms’ supplies and offering of safe retreat zones for insurgency
and terrorist groups in Southern Africa in the fight of these groups
against the “radical” governments in the region: Unita in Angola,
Renamo in Mozambique, the militias of Muzorewa and Sithole as
well as Zapu dissidents in Zimbabwe, the so-called Lesotho Liberation
Army in Lesotho. In most cases, these groups were real proxies of
South Africa; the operations, and sometimes the very existence of these
groups, depended entirely on the South African engagement.
298
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
299
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300
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
26 Grundy, K. W., The Militarization of South African Politics, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
27 Ibid., p. 88.
301
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28 As an introduction see: Sparks, A., Tomorrow is Another Country. The Inside Story of South
Africa’s Negotiated Revolution, South Africa: Struik Book Distributors, 1994. Beinart, W.,
Twentieth Century South Africa, Oxford: OUP, 1994.
29 Venter, D., South Africa and the African comity of nations: from isolation to integration, Africa
Institute Research Paper, nº 56, Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 1993.
302
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
30 For the Namibian conflict and its solution see: Pycroft, C, Angola – The Forgotten
Tragedy. Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 20, nº 2, 1994, p. 241. Wood, B., Preventing
the Vacuum: Determinants of the Namibian Settlement. Journal of Southern African Studies,
vol. 17, nº 2, 1991. Hofmeier, R. (ed.), Afrika Jahrbuch (1987-1996). Politik, Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft in Afrika südlich der Sahara, Opladen, Leske & Budrich, 1988-1997.
31 See among others: Wood, B., Preventing the Vacuum: Determinants of the Namibian
Settlement. In: Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 17, nº 2, 1991. Hofmeier, R. (ed.);
op. cit., Marte, L. F.; op. cit., Tvedten, I., US policy toward Angola since 1975. Journal of
Modern African Studies, 30, 1, p. 31-52, 1992. Somerville, Keith, Foreign Military intervention
in Africa, London: Pinter, 1990. Wardrop, J., Continuity and change in South Africa and in
South Africa’s relations with its neighbors. In: Bruce, R. D. (org.), Prospects for Peace: Changes
in the Indian Ocean Region, Perth, Indian Ocean Center for Peace Studies, 1992, p. 253-272.
303
WOLFGANG DÖPCKE
32 Lefebvre, J.A., Moscow’s Cold War and Post-Cold War Policies in Africa. In: Keller,
Edmond J. & Rothchild, D. (eds); Africa in the New International Order: Rethinking State
Sovereignty and Regional Security, Boulder, Col. & London: Lynne Rienner,1996. Light, M.,
Moscow’s Retreat from Africa. In: Hughes, A. (ed.); Marxism’s Retreat from Africa, London:
Frank Cass, 1992. Grey, R.D., The Soviet Presence in Africa: an Analysis of Goals. In:
Journal of Modern African Studies, 1984, 22, 3.
33 Blight and Weiss cite an interview with Jorge Risquet, member of the Cuban Politbureau
and principal negotiator of the treaties with South Africa: “Cuito Cuanavale was decisive.
The negotiations came later. The battle of Stalingrad took place three years before the fall
of Berlin, but it was at Stalingrad that the outcome of World War II was decided. ... The
304
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
African excursions into Angola during the 1980s were of very low
risk, the military engagements in 1987 and in the spring of 1988 show
a changed war and the limits of South African military power. Faced
with the weakening of the military option, with détente among the
superpowers and the threat of more severe sanctions, South Africa opted
for exchanging Namibia’s independence for the retreat of Cuban troops,
a move in which neither South Africa nor Cuba would loose face.
The depreciation of the military option in Angola and Namibia
had important repercussions for domestic politics and the internal
decision-making process. Analysts observed a parallel realignment of
power and influence at the heart of the government, already perceptible
during the final phase of Botha’s rule, which brought to the forefront
again the “doves” and “diplomats” at the expense of the “securocrats”.
It seems that in terms of formulation of foreign policy the DFA,
advocating a more political and diplomatic approach, regained
preeminence. Parallel to the solution of the Namibian question,
President Botha started a new diplomatic initiative, visiting several
European and African countries. When, finally, F.W. de Klerk assumed
power in the National Party and in the State, he rapidly completed
this power shift and diminished drastically the influence of the State
Security Council and the security establishment on the government
decision-making process.34
However, the solution of the Namibian conflict should not be
seen as an isolated incident, but rather as one element in a broad
South Africans realized that putting up a frontal battle in Southern Angola and Northern
Namibia would amount to the swan song of apartheid. So they decided to concede Namibia.”
Blight, J. & Weiss, Th. G. (eds.), The Suffering Grass: Superpowers and Regional Conflict in
Southern Africa and the Caribbean, Boulder (Lynne Rienner) 1992: Conclusions: Must the
Grass Suffer? p. 161. See as well: O’Neill, K. & Munslow, B., Angola: Ending the Cold War
in Southern Africa. In: Furley, O. (org.), Conflict in Africa, London: Tauris, 1995, p. 183.
Ohlson, Th., The Cuito Cuanavale Syndrome: Revealing SADF Vulnerabilities, in: Moss,
G. & Obery, I. (orgs.): South African Review 5, p. 181, Johannesburg (Ravan) 1989. Gleijeses,
P., Conflicting Missions. Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel Hill, North
Carolina University Press, 2002.
34 Wardrop, J., Continuity and change in South Africa and in South Africa’s relations with
305
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Evans agues that this “New Diplomacy” was not new at all and
that it represented more a change in style that in substance. The central
notion of South Africa as a hegemonic power in the regional context
35 This argument is based principally on: Evans, G., South Africa in Remission: the Foreign
Policy of an Altered State. Journal of Modern African Studies, 34, 2, p. 249-269, 1996. Vale,
P., South Africa’s New Diplomacy. In: Moss, G. & Obery, I. (orgs.), South African Review 6.
From “Red Friday” to Codesa, Johannesburg: Ravan, 1992, p. 424.
36 Van Heerden, N.P., South Africa and Africa: The New Diplomacy. In: ISSUP Bulletin,
nº 4, p. 1-11, 1989, cited in: Venter, D., South Africa and the African comity of nations: from
isolation to integration, Africa Institute Research Paper, nº 56, Pretoria: Africa Institute of
South Africa, 1993.
306
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
307
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very successfully conquered during the 1970s and which allowed the
ANC to project itself as a “government-in-waiting”,40 the liberation
movement embarked on a major revision of its foreign policy, “bowed
to the inevitable [...] and began the process of policy convergence with
the New Diplomacy”.41 In a series of policy documents, the ANC
recognized the dramatic changes in the international society, the collapse
of its longtime ally, the Soviet Union, and the rise of a new multi- (or
uni-)polar international order under capitalist socio-economic
hegemony and dominated politically by the United States. The ANC
and government foreign policy declarations converged, and, finally, in
a key political document, in fact in its program of government (“Ready
to govern”) of 1992, the ANC adopted the language and central
concepts of “New Diplomacy”.42 Evans characterizes this as an “elite
pacting” between the DFA of the white government and the ANC
Department of Foreign Affairs and argues that “by the time of the
elections in April 1994, in foreign policy terms at least, South Africa
had become more or less a unitary state actor.”43
40 Evans, G., op. cit., Thomas, S., The Diplomacy of Liberation: the International Relations of the
African National Congress of South Africa, 1960-1985, London: 1995. Johnstone, A. und
Shezi, S.; The ANC’s foreign policy. In: Johnstone, et. al. (orgs.); Constitution-Making in the
new South Africa, London: Leicester UP, 1993.
41 Evans, G., op. cit., p. 258.
42 African National Congress: Ready to Govern. ANC policy guidelines for a democratic South
Africa adopted at the National Conference (28-31.5.1992), 1992. African National Congress:
Foreign Policy in a New Democratic South Africa. A Discussion Paper (oct. 1993), 1993. African
National Congress: Discussion Paper: Foreign Policy Perspective in a Democratic South Africa
(dec. 1994), 1994. Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), South African Foreign Policy,
Discussion Document, July 1996. DFA, Parliamentary Briefing, sept. 1997. DFA, Statement
on Nzo’s Budget Speech, 7.5.1998.
43 Evans, G., op. cit., p. 259, 266.
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of public debate, the transition in foreign policy was far from a calm
one. For the first time in South Africa’s post Second World War history,
foreign policy orientation turned into a publicly widely debated issue,
involving academics, civil society, the press, members of Parliament
and the very ANC and its political allies, in a free and inspired domestic
discussion context. In this lively debate, the DFA was criticized for
neither representing nor realizing a break with the past, neither in terms
of the Department’s composition, nor in relation to the foreign policy
formulation (“elitist”, “without public control”). The foreign policy
of the new South Africa would simply accept the rules of the
international game, would not show moral leadership and would not
confront “global apartheid” and “international capitalism”.44 In this
debate, distinct foreign policy traditions entered into confrontation,
within the ANC (for example between cadres who had acquired
political sensitivity within the country and those with an exile career)
or between the ANC and the traditional foreign policy establishment.45
In ideological terms, the dispute occurred between visions of an
opportunistic insertion into the international system, being guided by
pure economic advantages, accepting the rules and hierarchies of the
international order and those which were prepared to question these
rules and which proposed a foreign policy based on firm moral and
political principles.46
The meeting of these distinct foreign policy traditions led, in
the long run, to the emergence of a new South African foreign policy
“identity”, 47 which attempts to combine rather contradictory
ideological strands: a strong and sometimes even radical pan-africanist
44 Mail and Guardian, 9.6.1995: “Foreign Affairs Department under Fire”. Mail and Guardian,
Open: Foreign Policy of the New South Africa, CASA, Uni of Western Cape, Working Paper,
Bellville (CSAS) 1995. Calland, R. e Weld, D., Multilateralism, southern Africa and the
postmodern world: an exploratory essay, Bellville (University of the Western Cape, Centre for
Southern African Studies) 1994.
47 See: Cilliers, J., An Emerging South African Foreign Policy Identity? IGD, Occasional
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48 The Star, Johannesburg, 1996, 25.9., “African renaissance can’t remain romantic concept”.
49 DFA: Background Document delivered by the MFA at the Parliamentary Media Briefing
Week, 11.2.1997
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50 The East African (Nairobi), 4.8.97: “Big Shift as Mandela Warms up to Abacha”. Frankfurter
contend with the legacy of apartheid and old friendships”. Frankfurter Rundschau, 22.10.1997:
“Die USA suchten Mandela zu besänftigen”.
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and our destiny is intertwined with the region; […]. Southern Africa
is therefore a pillar upon which South Africa’s foreign policy rests.”52
Openly, the ANC and Nelson Mandela rejected hegemonic pretensions.
Being aware of the economic inequalities and asymmetries in the region,
the ANC declarations did not leave any doubt that the new government
intended a radical break with the “geo-economics” of the de Klerk era:
“A democratic South Africa should therefore explicitly renounce all
hegemonic ambitions in the region. It should resist all pressure to
become the ‘regional power’ at the expense of the rest of the
subcontinent; instead, it should seek to become part of a movement
to create a new form of economic interaction in Southern Africa based
on the principles of mutual benefit and interdependence.”53
After the end of apartheid Nelson Mandela made a great effort
to calm fears of a South African regional hegemony: “ [A] democratic
South Africa will ... resist any pressure or temptation to pursue its
own interests at the expense of the subcontinent. (...) ... any move
towards a common market or economic community must ensure that
industrial development in the entire region is not prejudiced. It is
essential therefore that a program to restructure regional economic
relations after apartheid be carefully calibrated to avoid exacerbating
inequalities.”54
But the praxis of South Africa’s economic relations with its
neighbors turned out to be very different and did not mark a break
with the past. In fact, the new South Africa completed the “geo-
economics” of the “New Diplomacy” of the de Klerk era without very
much taking into consideration the legitimate interests of its
neighboring countries.
Since the early 1990s, before the reintegration of South Africa
into the international and sub-regional community, trade between the
South Africa and the sub-region increased substantially, as a result of
52 ANC, Foreign Policy in a New Democratic South Africa. A Discussion Paper, out. 1993.
53 Ibid.
54 Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Future Foreign Policy. In: Foreign Affairs 72, nov.-dec.
1993, p. 91-2.
312
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
R.I., et. al., South Africa and its Neighbors, p. 91, 1985.
56 Engel, U., The Foreign Policy of Zimbabwe, Hamburg: Institut für Afrikakunde, 1994,
p. 291.
57 For statistical evidence of the decline of South African growth rates in the period 1960-
1987, more marked after 1980, and its explanation, see: Kaplinsky, R., The Manufacturing
Sector. In: Maasdorp, G. and Whiteside, A., Towards a Post-Apartheid Future. Political and
Economic Relations in Southern Africa, London/Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1992, p. 83.
Unemployment: The Star, Johannesburg, 1996, 19.6.: “Unemployment resists feeble assaults”.
58 Financial Mail, Johannesburg, 1992, 28.8.: “Trade. New directions”.
59 The East African, Nairobi, 1995, 24.7.: “S. African firms fill void as West turns elsewhere”.
60 Piazolo, M., Südafrika, Wachstumsmotor der südlichen Afrika? In: Afrika Spektrum, 31,
313
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61 Mail & Guardian, 1997, 23. – 29.5., “South Africa accused of bully-boy tactics in trade
with Zimbabwe.”
62 The Business Herald, Harare, 1993, 3.6., “Pretoria seeks to boost trade with Mozambique”.
The Star, Johannesburg, 1994, 24.11.: “Trade boom for SA goods”. South African firms as
well gained a substantial portion of the aid funds entering Mozambique to assist the
reconstruction efforts. South African firms have won major contracts for road and bridge
construction, airport renovation and the elimination of land mines. It is not without a
certain irony that South Africa is profiting from the destruction that it had helped to cause
in Mozambique during the years of destabilization policy.
63 SCMB International Business Centers, 31.5.2000, website: mbeni.co.za.
64 See, for example: Muller, M., Some observations on South Africa’s economic diplomacy
and the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs, IGD Occasional Paper, nº 27, oct. 2000.
314
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
22.11.2002.
69 Cilliers, J., An Emerging South African Foreign Policy Identity? IGD Occasional Paper
315
WOLFGANG DÖPCKE
70 President Thabo Mbeki in his State of the Nation Address before the National Assembly,
4 February 2000. In: Muller, M., Some observations on South Africa’s economic diplomacy and
the role of the Department of Foreign Affairs, IGD Occasional Paper, nº 27, Oct. 2000.
316
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
CONCLUSIONS
71 Jackie Selebi, Director General of the DFA, during 1999 conference on foreign policy
317
WOLFGANG DÖPCKE
73 Gerrit Olivier & Deon Geldenhuys, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: From Idealism to
Pragmatism. In: Business & the Contemporary World, vol. IX, nº 2, 1997, p. 365-6.
In: Muller, M.; op. cit.
318
FOREIGN POLICY AND POLITICAL REGIME: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA
319
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS,
1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE1
Thomas E. Skidmore
321
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
2 A note on sources is appropriate here. From 1930 to at least 1935, the press was relatively
free. It was during these years that key professional associations were formed in Brazil – The
Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil in 1930, The Academia de Medicina in 1931 and the
Ordem de Engenheiros e Arquitetos in 1933. See Randal Johnson, Literature, Culture and
Authoritarianism in Brazil, 1930-1945. In: Working Papers of the Latin American Program at
the Wilson Center, 1989. There is no evidence in any of the publications of these associations
of disagreement with Brazil’s foreign policy. During the Estado Novo, there was certainly
censorship – and repression – of dissenting groups, but little evidence that groups sympathetic
to the Axis formed any significant part of the Brazilian public. Censorship collapsed by late
1943 and here again no significant foreign policy dissent emerged. It should be added that
this paper does not cover the South American border conflicts and wars in which Brazil was
normally only tangentially involved. For further detail see Amado Cervo and José Calvet de
Magalhães, Depois das Caravelas. Brasília: Editora Universidade de Brasília, 2000. The
Brazilian foreign policy’s elite’s principal concern within South America was Argentina,
which was consistently regarded as a serious rival, if not a potential enemy.
3 One of the clearest formulations of this impatience may be seen in Serzedelo Correia,
O Problema Econômico no Brasil. Brasília: Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1980. This book
was originally published in 1903. For an introduction to the “Old Republic (1889-1930),”
see Thomas E. Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
4 An essential reference work on the history of Brazilian foreign policy is Amado Luiz Cervo
and Clodoaldo Bueno, História da Política Exterior do Brasil. São Paulo: Ática, 1992.
Also of value is the overview by Monica Hirst, History of Brazilian Diplomacy
(http://www.mre.gov.br/acs/diplomacia/ingles/h_diplom.) 27 Feb 2003. Readers should note
my paper neglects Brazil’s relation with her South American neighbors. I have not found any
evidence in this literature on this subject that contradicts the thesis of my paper.
322
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
ideology for change was the view that Brazil would never achieve a
position of economic power in the hemisphere as long as it retained
what they considered the medieval trappings of monarchy.
That this regime change occurred without a shot being fired
and was greeted largely with public indifference testifies to the decline
in the popularity of the monarch –now an ailing and largely invisible
old man. It was followed, however, by a decade of political instability
that threatened the very existence of Brazil as a single country and
postponed effectively any foreign policy initiatives.
The decade witnessed two major challenges to the new
government: one by monarchist interests, the other by regional
separatists. The former had some slight international flavor. A cabal
of monarchist rebels, including large elements of the navy, staged a
military rebellion against the vulnerable Republican regime. They
created enough disorder to alarm the U.S. investors in Brazil –not
the first or the last time U.S. investors have helped Latin American
governments in order to protect U.S. assets. These investors
dispatched a privately financed armada to Rio harbor, which was
used to help defeat the rebels.5
With the Republican regime safely in place by the end of the
century, the Foreign Ministry set about consolidating its international
boundaries, several of which (for example, with Bolivia and Peru)
had been contested. The conspicuous success of this initiative strongly
suggests that dropping the trappings of monarchy, if not actually
helping Brazil’s image abroad, certainly did not hurt it. Baron Rio
Branco (Foreign Minister from 1902-1912) who virtually dominated
all foreign policy, was able, through extensive diplomatic efforts with
countries likely to be involved in the adjudication process, to achieve
boundary settlements that were in all cases decided in Brazil’s
favor.6 He also pioneered the close U.S. – Brazilian alliance, which
5 Steven C. Topik. Trade and Gunboats, The United States and Brazil in the Age of Empire.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
6 E. Bradford Burns. The Unwritten Alliance, Rio-Branco and Brazilian –American Relations.
323
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
Strategy, 1919-1929, Journal of Latin American Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2, november
1980, p. 341-364.
10 Thomas H. Holloway, The Brazilian Coffee Valorization of 1906. Madison: The
324
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
11 Marcelo Abreu and Dorte Verner, Long-Term Brazilian Economic Growth, 1930-94, Paris:
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1997, p. 21, 59. The external
context of Brazil’s economic struggle in this era is analyzed in Winston Fritsch, External
Constraints on Economic Policy in Brazil, 1889-1930. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh
Press, 1988. For analysis of Brazilian economic history, especially industrialization, see
Werner Baer, The Brazilian Economy, Growth and Development. (5th ed.) Westport: Praeger,
2001, Warren Dean, The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880-1945. Austin: The University
of Texas Press, 1969 and the chapters in Paulo Neuhaus (ed.) Economia Brasileira: Uma Visão
Histórica. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campus Ltda., 1980. The overwhelming need to integrate
the national economy is stressed in Wilson Cano, Desequilíbrios Regionais e Concentração
Industrial no Brasil, 1930-1970. São Paulo: Editora Unicamp, 1985.
12 For an overall view, see Bill Albert, South America and the First World War. Cambridge:
assumed to favor the Kaiser, joined the voices advocating support of the Allies.
325
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
14 For a treatment of this subject, see Francisco Luiz Teixeira Vinhosa, O Brasil na Primeira
Policy Strategy, 1919-1929. Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12, issue 2, november
1980.
16 Stanley E. Hilton, Brazil and the Post-Versailles World: Elite Images and Foreign Policy
Strategy, 1919-1929, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 12, issue 2, november 1980,
p. 352.
17 Cited in Maria Helena Capelato, Os Arautos do Liberalismo. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1989,
p. 24.
326
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
For the next decade and a half Brazilian public life was dominated
by Getúlio Vargas.19 Although in 1930 he had already been federal
Minister of Finance and Governor of Rio Grande do Sul, he was
relatively little known on the national or international scene. His
detractors then and thereafter called him “machiavellian,” “a chameleon,”
18 Once again, as had happened with the League of Nations, the Brazilians were hoping
their wartime participation would carry them to victory in their quest for a permanent seat
on the key policy making body of the new international organization, the Security Council
of the U.N. Mario Gibson Barboza, Na diplomacia o traço todo da vida. Rio de Janeiro:
Francisco Alves, 2002, p. 30-31. Once again they were disappointed.
19 For a succinct and highly insightful overview of this period, see Edgard Carone, Brasil:
327
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
and “a sphinx.” All observers were struck by his deceptive passivity and
avoidance of commitment. His favorite motto was said to be “Let’s
let matters lie and see how they turn out.” But behind the façade of
passivity lay a shrewd sense of timing, an uncanny ability to judge
people, and a fierce devotion to staying in power.20 One should not
forget that soon after 1930 he centralized all significant police functions
and made them all directly report to him.21
Upon reaching the presidential palace in November 1930,
Vargas’ first task was to consolidate the revolutionaries’ hold on power.
Most essential was confirming Rio’s (i.e. the national government’s)
control of all the state political machines, several of which had opposed
the Vargas candidacy and his subsequent revolutionary movement.
Using his power as Provisional President, Vargas replaced every
incumbent state Governor except one (Minas Gerais) with an
“Interventor.” This strategy succeeded without struggle everywhere
except in São Paulo, the home state of the recently deposed president,
Washington Luiz. Opposition there to Vargas and the Rio government
simmered and finally exploded into a full-fledged military revolt in
July 1932, the minimum objective of which was to transform the
state of São Paulo into an independent entity. It should also be noted
that the rebels favored another losing cause: a return to the more
decentralized liberal economic policy that had prevailed before 1930.
Most of the federal army remained loyal to Rio, no other state
intervened, the Rio government emerged victorious in six weeks and
had no trouble in maintaining widespread diplomatic recognition as
the legitimate Brazilian regime.22
available in John W.F. Dulles, Vargas of Brazil. Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1967.
Vargas’s personal diaries have proved a distinct disappointment as a source on his behavior:
Leda Soares (Ed.). Getúlio Vargas Diário: 1930-1936. Vol. 1, Rio de Janeiro: Fundação
Getúlio Vargas, 1995 and Getúlio Vargas Diário: 1937-1942. Vol. 2, Rio de Janeiro: Fundação
Getúlio Vargas, 1995. These volumes are not really diaries, but appointment books.
21 Vargas’s growing control over the police is described in Elizabeth Cancelli, O Mundo da
Violência: A Polícia da Era Vargas. Brasília: Ed. UnB, 1994. Interestingly enough, Cancelli got
much of her information from the reports of U.S. diplomatic personnel back to Washington.
22 Stanley Hilton, 1932 A Guerra Civil Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1982.
328
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
329
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
25 Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, Argentina and Brazil during the 1930’s: The Impact of British
and American International Policies. In: Latin America in the 1930’s: The Role of the Periphery
in World Crisis, Oxford: St. Antony’s College, 1984, p. 148-149.
26 Ibid, p. 151.
330
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
27 Osvaldo Aranha was a loyal compatriot of Vargas throughout the 1930-1945 period.
They both came from Brazil’s southern most state, Rio Grande do Sul. After serving as
Finance Minister, Aranha was subsequently Brazil’s ambassador to the U.S. (1934-1937)
and Foreign Minister (1937-1944). There is a well documented biography in Stanley Hilton,
Oswaldo Aranha. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Objetiva, 1994.
28 Brazilian civilian industrialists, who were obviously a minority voice among the public in
the Vargas era, were often critical of what they saw as the Vargas government’s excessive
attention to agrarian interests in its trade policy. A good example is Roberto Simonsen’s
displeasure with Brazil’s 1935 trade treaty with the United States. Marisa Saenz Leme, A
Ideologia dos Industriais Brasileiros, 1919-1945. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1978, p. 174-176.
29 There is a detailed analysis of the system in Stanley E. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers,
1930-1939. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. See also Ricardo Antonio Silva Seitenfus,
O Brasil De Getúlio Vargas: Formação Dos Blocos: 1930-1942. São Paulo: Companhia Editora
Nacional, 1985.
331
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
332
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
31 For an early account, see Robert M. Levine, The Vargas Regime: The Critical Years 1934-
1938, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970.
32 The Communist revolt of 1935 has generated a large and growing historiography. This is
hardly surprising since the interpretation of these events, along with the history of the
Brazilian Communist Party, has great implications for our understanding of the left in
twentieth-century Brazil. For an overview of the revolt, see Stanley Hilton, A Rebelião
333
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
Vermelha. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record, 1986 and Nelson Werneck Sodré, A Intentona
Comunista de 1935. Rio Grande do Sul: Mercado Aberto, 1986. The latter is by a long-time
Communist officer in the Brazilian army. Marly de A.G. Vianna, Revolucionários de 35. São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1992, is an account highly favorable to Luiz Carlos Prestes.
For an account based on the Moscow archives, see William Waack, Camaradas. São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 1993. A useful collection of documents is included in Sodré, 1986.
The treatment that most effectively puts the revolt within the larger context of Brazilian-
Soviet relations is Stanley E. Hilton, Brazil and the Soviet Challenge, 1917-1947. Austin:
The University of Texas Press, 1991. The most balanced account of the domestic scene is
Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, Estratégias da Ilusão. São Paulo: Companhia Das Letras, 1991, which
considers the entire ideological context of the left.
33 The best documented study remains Helgio Trindade, Integralismo, o Fascismo Brasileiro na
Década de 30. São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1974. For monographic studies, see
René Gertz, O Fascismo, No Sul do Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Mercado Aberto Ltda., 1987
and Rosa Maria Feteiro Cavalari, Integralismo: Ideologia e Organização de um Partido de
Massa no Brasil (1932-1937). São Paulo: Editora da Universidade do Sagrado Coração,
1999. For one of the most comprehensive interpretations, see Stanley E. Hilton, O Brasil e
a Crise Internacional, 1930-1945. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1977, p. 23-57.
334
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
Genesis und Konsolidierung der brasilianischen Diktatur von 1937. Saarbrüken: Verlag für
Entwicklungspolitik, 1996 and Karl Loewenstein, Brazil Under Vargas. New York: Macmillan,
1942, devote virtually no coverage to the international relations of Brazil in this era. The
same is true of the following treatments: Aspasia Camargo, Dulce Chaves Pandolfi, Eduardo
Rodrigues Gomes, Maria Celina Soares D’Araujo and Mario Grynszpan, O Golpe Silencioso.
Rio de Janeiro: Rio Fundo, 1989. Lucia Lippi Oliveira, Monica Pimenta Velloso and
Angela Maria Castro Gomes, Estado Novo. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1982, Dulce
Pandolfi, Repensando o Estado Novo. Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV, 1999 and Simon
Schwartzman, Helena Maria Bousquet Bohemy and Vanda Maria Ribeiro Costa, Tempos de
Capanema. São Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1984. The Pandolfi book is a collection of individually
authored chapters. Boris Fausto’s chapter on the international context is afforded only four
pages in this 345-page book.
335
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
Vargas era. Aside from Gustavo Barroso, the Integralist movement seemed relatively free of
systematic anti-semitism. The federal government, especially in its immigration policy, was
another matter, as Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro argues (and documents). In: O Anti-semitismo
na Era Vargas: fantasmas de uma geração. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1988. For follow-up research
by the same author see Ronaldo Franca, Preconceito Oficial. Veja. 22 March 2000. Jeffrey
Lesser, based on a different interpretation of the documents, has contested Tucci Carneiro’s
argument. Lesser, O Brasil e a Questão Judaica: Imigração, Diplomacia e Preconceito. Rio de
Janeiro: Imago, 1995.
37 This was also the era of the Good Neighbor Policy which was, as one scholar aptly noted,
“nothing more than an expression of the traditional, legal rights of states to respect for their
sovereignty and national borders – something the United States had glorified in principle
and violated in practice since its founding as a republic.” Elizabeth A. Cobbs, The Rich
Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and Kaiser in Brazil. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, p. 35.
38 This is well treated in Ricardo Antonio Silva Seitenfus, O Brasil de Getúlio Vargas e a
Formação dos Blocos: 1930-1942. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1985.
39 Aranha had to do a quick remake of his previously pro-democracy rhetoric. The change
can be seen in his collected speeches. Oswaldo Aranha, 1894-1960: Discursos e Conferênicas.
Brasília: Fundação Alexandre Gusmão, 1994.
336
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
337
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
America, 1939-1945. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1981
and his Suastica Sobre o Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1977.
42 The finest overall interpretation of this period is R.A. Humphreys, Latin America and the
Second World War: 1939-1942. London: The Athlone Press, 1981 and his Latin America and
the Second World War: 1942-1945. London: The Athlone Press, 1982.
43 There was a probability that Germany was going to declare war on the United States. But
the timing was crucial. Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis. New York: Norton, 2000,
p. 444-46.
44 The premier source remains Frank D. McCann Jr., The Brazilian-American Alliance
338
BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER VARGAS, 1930-1945: A CASE OF REGIME TYPE IRRELEVANCE
45 McCann has provided several accounts: Frank D. McCann Jr. The Brazilian-American
Alliance 1937-1945. Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1973 and his “The Força
Expedicionária Brasileira in the Italian Campaign, 1944-1945”. Paper for Conference of
Army Historians sponsored by the US Army Center for Military History. Washington D.C.:
University of New Hampshire, Department of History. June 9, 1992. For a Brazilian
account, see William Waack, As Duas Faces da Glória. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira,
1985. Vargas’s view of this adventure of sending troops to Europe paralleled the earlier
hopes that participation in WWI would greatly enhance Brazil’s international image. In
1943 he predicted that “Brazilians would be the most numerous representatives of Latin
culture among the victorious nations.” Humphreys, Latin America and the Second World
War, 1942-1945. p. 79.
46 Here Vargas was revealing a flexibility and pragmatism that differentiated him from the
“typical” Latin American dictator and led to his successful campaign to become Brazil’s
democratically-elected President in 1951.
339
THOMAS E. SKIDMORE
So did the Liberals, who had lost in 1930 and who now saw
their chance to return to power. One of their leaders, Virgilio de Melo
Franco, gave a press interview in February 1945 in which he said on
the foreign policy to come: “Penso que devemos seguir nos rumos
invariáveis das tradições do Itamaraty (the Brazilian Foreign Ministry)
máxime pelas diretrizes confirmadas nos últimos tempos...” Vargas’s
problem was that the military did not trust him when he expressed his
commitment to holding open elections and abiding by the result. They
had their own plans for a return to democratic Brazil.47 The same
generals who had been key to the success of Vargas’s coup in 1937
ousted him from power in 1945 and presided over the election of a
new Constituent Assembly in 1946, which reconstructed the basis of
a liberal democracy. In this, the generals voted with the public, and
the objectives, as always with regime change in Brazil, were primarily
domestic.48
Editora Zelio Valverde S.A., 1946, p. 135. The assumption of continuity from the Estado
Novo is striking. In one authoritative account of the politics surrounding the fall of Vargas
the description of the political debates on Brazil’s future includes virtually no discussion of
foreign policy. John D. French, The Populist Gamble of Getúlio Vargas in 1945. In: David
Rock (Ed.), Latin American in the 1940’s. Berkeley: University of CA Press, 1994,
p. 141-165.
48 For a close study of the U.S. Ambassador’s role in the fall of Vargas, see Stanley Hilton,
340
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
Amado Luiz Cervo
INTRODUCTION
341
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
342
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
1 Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste. Tout empire périra. Théorie des relations internacionales. Paris:
Armand Colin, 1992. Translated into Portuguese: Todo império perecerá. Teoria das relações
internacionais. Brasília: EdUnB, 2000.
2 Lafer, Celso. A identidade internacional do Brasil e a política externa brasileira: passado, presente
Brasília: IBRI, 2001. Cervo, Amado Luiz & Bueno, Clodoaldo. História da Política Exterior
do Brasil. Brasília: EdUnB, 2002. Cervo Amado Luiz. Sob o signo neoliberal: as relações
internacionais da América Latina. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, nº 43 v. 2,
p. 5-27, 2000. Ibidem, Relações internacionais do Brasil: um balanço da era Cardoso,
nº 45, v. 1, p. 5-35, 2002.
4 Cervo, Amado Luiz. History of International Relations. International Encyclopedia of the
343
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
5See a colective work we have organized: O desafio internacional, a política exterior do Brasil
de 1930 a nossos dias, Brasília: EdUnB, 1994, p. 25-31. See furthermore Amado Luiz Cervo
and José Flávio Sombra Saraiva studies in Savard, Pierre e Vigezzi, Brunello (ed.),
Multiculturalism and the history of internacional relations from the 18th Century up to the present,
Milano: Edizioni Unicopli, 1999, p. 291 and 337.
344
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
345
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
346
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
347
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
9 Almeida, Paulo Roberto de. Formação da diplomacia econômica no Brasil. As relações econômicas
348
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
the monarchic regime, but did not affect the essence of the liberal-
conservative paradigm of that period, consistent with the so-called
international division of labor.
The Republic, between 1889 and 1930, implemented another
variable of the liberal-conservative paradigm, denominated diplomacy
of agro-exportation by Clodoaldo Bueno.10 This occurred because
the ruling elite, composed of farmers and a stratum of newly enriched
people, had taken the place of the old imperial aristocracy in the control
of the State, using its power to achieve its own aims. The Republic
corresponds, therefore, to a political regime that reduced even more
the definition of national interests, tying it to the objectives of the
hegemonic socio-economic group.
Since 1929, the crisis of capitalism, which affected deeply the
exports of primary goods, combined with social transformations –
i.e. growth of the urban masses, birth of an incipient national
bourgeoisie and of embryonic trade union organizations, demand for
employment and industrial products, military and intellectual
dissatisfaction with the century-old backwardness and dependence –
explains the slow but steady rupture in the political sphere in the larger
Latin American countries. The liberal-conservative paradigm of foreign
policy did not correspond to this new external and internal conjuncture.
The unilateral regime of open doors, imposed by the capitalist center
and accepted by the Latin American governments, gave way to the
formulation of national projects which imprinted a new direction on
the foreign policies of the region. This new phase had as its archetype
Brazil since 1930 during the Vargas’ period. It became generalized with
the ascension to power of Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, the
nationalization of petroleum in Mexico and the willingness of almost
all great and small States in the region to support the expansion of
secondary industries. Paradoxically, the worldwide crisis of capitalism
immersed Latin America in a process of fast modernization, eagerly
welcomed by the new political leaders. The origins of this dramatic
10 Bueno, Clodoaldo. A República e sua política exterior, 1889 a 1902. São Paulo: UNESP/Funag,
1995.
349
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
internacionais da América Latina: velhos e novos paradigmas, cited. See furthermore: Seitenfus,
Ricardo A. S. O Brasil de Getúlio Vargas e a formação dos blocos, 1930-1942. São Paulo: Ed.
Nacional, 1985. Moura, Gerson. Sucessos e ilusões. Relações internacionais do Brasil durante a
após a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 1991.
350
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
351
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
352
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
353
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
de Estudos Brasileiros, 1958. Dantas, San Tiago. Política Externa Independente. Rio de
Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1962. Storrs, Keith Larry. Brazil’s Independent Foreign Policy,
1961-1964. Cornell University, 1973, PhD Dissertation. Manzur, Tânia M. P. G. Opinião
pública e política exterior nos governos de Jânio Quadros e João Goulart (1961 a 1964).
Universidade de Brasília, 2000, Tese de Doutorado.
15 Ligiéro, Luiz Fernando. Políticas semelhantes em momentos diferentes: exame e comparação
354
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
Universidade de Brasília, 2000, Tese de Doutorado. Pinheiro, Letícia. Foreign policy decision-
making under the Geisel government. The President, the military and the foreign ministry. London
School of Economics and Political Sciences, 1994, PhD Dissertation
16 Guimarães, Samuel Pinheiro (ed.). Argentina: visões brasileiras. Brasília: Ipri-Funag, 2000.
See, particularly, my text in this collective work, “A política exterior da Argentina, 1945-
2000”, p. 11-88.
355
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
defined in the last chapter of the books Relações Internacionais da América Latina, velhos e
novos paradigmas and História da Política Exterior de Brasil, as well as in two articles of the
Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, cited in note 3. See furthermore: Bandeira, Moniz.
Estado nacional e política internacional na América Latina (1930-1992. São Paulo: Ensaio,
1992. Bernal-Meza, Raúl. Sistema mundial y Mercosur: globalización, regionalismo y políticas
exteriores comparadas. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano, 2000.
356
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
Aires: Macchi, 2000. Sevares, Julio. Por qué cayó la Argentina: imposición, crisis y reciclaje del
orden neoliberal. Buenos Aires: Norma, 2002.
357
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
358
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
CONCLUSIONS
20 Guimarães, Samuel Pinheiro; Ferreira, Oliveiros, Cervo, A. Brasil no Mundo. In: Morhy,
359
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
360
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
361
AMADO LUIZ CERVO
362
POLITICAL REGIMES AND BRAZILS FOREIGN POLICY
CONTRIBUTORS
363
Title: Foreign Policy and Political Regime
Editor: Jose Flavio Sombra Saraiva
Editorial Coordination: Ednete Moraes Lessa
Reviser: Sérgio Bath
Cover: Samuel Tabosa
Electronic Preparation and Graphic Project: Samuel Tabosa
Format: 15,5 x 22,5 cm
Type: AGaramond 12, 9
Humanist 777 BT 16, 12 ,11,7, 9, 8
Humanist 77 Lt BT 18, 16, 9, 8, 7
Paper: Cartão Supremo 250 g/m2. Cover: Dull Plastified
Core: Ap. 75g/m2
Number of Pages: 364
Copies Printed: 2.000
Printed and Finished by: Teixeira Gráfica e Editora Ltda.